The Board on Professional Standards elected Ronald Benson as its new chair at a special election held at the May meeting in New Orleans. Benson, who lives and practices in Ann Arbor, Mich., selected Eric Nuetzel of St. Louis to serve with him as secretary of the Board. Benson and Nuetzel assumed their positions as Board chair and secretary, respectively, immediately following the May meeting of the Board.
At the time of his election, Benson chaired the Committee on Institutes. In that position he emphasized a consultative relationship with institutes. He conceives of BOPS as a representative body for determining goals and standards for education and training within the APsaA. “I think of the Board as a service agency to institutes,” Benson said. “No local group can have all the expertise that a national peer group can offer.”
During Benson's service on the COI, he met faculty members and candidates at all the APsaAs institutes. He was impressed with the positive relationship between active involvement in institute affairs and professional satisfaction as analysts: “The readiness of analysts to invest their time and energy in the work of the Board and its committees attests to the importance they attach to the work and encourages a broad, national view of the analytic educational process.”
While continuing the current activities and initiatives of BOPS, Benson would like to make greater use of the data we gather in consultative relations with institutes, such as site visits.
According to Benson, the APsaA is two associations in one, with two complementary agendas: It is both a membership organization and a community of educators. The history of the organization seems like a pendulum with too much swing in one direction or the other, he says. “We are in a time of moderation, not at either extreme—and that's a good place to be.”
Benson was born in Detroit but spent part of his childhood in Ephrata, Penn., in Amish country, where his family moved during World War II while his father served in the Army Medical Corps. He went to the University of Michigan for his undergraduate education and for medical school. His psychoanalytic training was at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. Though not formally trained as a child and adolescent analyst, he is a child psychiatrist and spent many years as a participant in the Child Analytic Study Program at the University of Michigan.
Asked about major influences on his professional development, Benson replied that “he read everything as a kid but had a blind spot about Freud.” Then in a college political science course, he came across a theorist who was interested in using Freudian theory in his political science work. “I learned that I was more intrigued by psychoanalysis than by political science,” Benson said.
“The readiness of analysts to invest their time and energy in the work of the Board and its committees attests to the importance they attach to the work and encourages a broad, national view of the analytic educational process.”
Ron Benson is married, with three grown children, one daughter-in-law, and one very aggressive, nasty Portuguese Water Dog. Not surprisingly, living in Ann Arbor, he is a fan of University of Michigan sports, especially football and hockey. For exercise, he prefers a brisk walk to the Michigan stadium. Benson and his wife Linda are also fans of musical theater and opera.
Benson chose Nuetzel as secretary in part because he had been impressed by Neutzel's balanced and insightful comments at BOPS meetings. Nuetzel is a newer face in the organization but has experience on BOPS committees and in leadership roles in St. Louis. “He's respected as an educator, teacher, administrator, and academician,” said Benson.
Nuetzel is on the faculty of Washington University Medical School in St. Louis and the St Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, where he is a training analyst. He is a past chair of the institute's Education Committee and its current director.
A St. Louis native, Nuetzel was also educated there. He went to medical school in St. Louis but went east to Columbia for his psychiatric residency, then returned to St. Louis to complete his psychoanalytic training. Unlike Benson, Nuetzel has a dog described as “nice”: Napoleon, a small, French-breed mutt who yaps. Nuetzel also has a nice wife, a daughter who is a high school junior, and a son who is a junior at Grinnel College.
Nuetzel comes from a theatrical family. He has a master's degree in drama and is an adjunct professor of drama at Washington University. He may be the only analyst we know who has performed in Othello.