Elsewhere in this issue you can read about psychoanalysts rising to the occasion in helping New Yorkers, Washingtonians, and Americans throughout the country deal with the catastrophic blow to our city and our country. The psychoanalysts portrayed in this issue, as well as the many whose contributions go unheralded, are a far cry from the image of our profession and its practitioners that our recent marketing study uncovered in the general population.
Our recent focus groups with members of the general public and mental health professionals revealed a very different portrait of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts. The community participants, our potential “consumers,” expressed relative ignorance of psychoanalysis; some wondered whether psychoanalysis “was still around,” and none thought of psychoanalysis as a possible source of help with emotional problems.
This distorted picture of psychoanalysis resembles the caricatures of analysis and analysts that have appeared in the media and have been attributed to us by therapists and researchers promoting competitive approaches to mental illness. Unfortunately it is also true that as psychoanalysts, we have contributed to this negative representation by embracing non-responsiveness and anonymity, not only in our consulting rooms, but also by carrying this persona into the world around us.
Certainly not all psychoanalysts, or even a majority, fit this negative image. Many of the mental health practitioners in the focus groups were personally acquainted with psychoanalysts who, they felt, were warm, empathic, talented therapists attuned to their patients and responsive to colleagues. However, this impression did not extend to psychoanalysis itself, and the group viewed these analysts as the exceptions that proved the rule.
In the past our institutions were isolated from their communities; our institutes for the most part stood apart from other centers of learning. Professionally we carved a niche for ourselves that was seen as both distant and exclusive. We appeared inflexible and arrogant, our institutions remote and elitist.
Psychoanalysis today is a far cry from what it was thirty to forty years ago; the modern psychoanalyst does not resemble the outdated caricature. As the focus groups of mental health professionals demonstrate, however, individual psychoanalysts face a difficult task in modifying the public image of our profession. This is where our psychoanalytic organizations become important.
In recent years the APsaA has undergone a radical transformation. We have extended our membership and modified our governance. We have shed our medical orthodoxy and have become more egalitarian. The association is less hierarchical and more democratic; training analyst status is not the only pathway to leadership. Our candidates are eligible to vote and play an important role in our activities. Our theory has become more pluralistic and our boundaries less rigid. We have welcomed psychotherapist, researcher, and educator associates and reached out to non-member psychoanalysts and other mental health professionals. We strive to establish a presence in academia and in the training programs of our core disciplines.
In years gone by, the controlling focuses of the association were psychoanalytic education, the maintenance of professional standards, and psychoanalytic scholarship. The emphasis was on maintaining the “pure gold” of psychoanalysis. To those who were not insiders, this created an image of an exclusive and presumptuous profession. The frequent warning that “the barbarians were at the gates” did little to correct this impression.
The American Psychoanalytic Association of today presents a very different image of psychoanalysis and the psychoanalyst from that reflected by the participants in the focus groups. Our members are seen in a variety of other roles outside our offices. We lobby in Washington; we have contributed amicus briefs in important court cases (including before the Supreme Court). We work with other groups such as the ACLU to further our goals. Our members supply a variety of community services, as was particularly notable in the aftermath of the recent devastation in New York. The APsaA supports scientific research, and we seek bridges between psychoanalytic understandings and current discoveries in the neurosciences and in psychopharmacology.
Psychoanalysts are becoming a more familiar presence in the media. Thanks to the efforts of many of our members, we frequently disseminate public information in the print and electronic media. Our Web site has received great interest and praise.
These developments in our association parallel the evolution of the psychoanalysts of today. Hence, to one familiar with the diverse talents of our members, the responses of psychoanalysts to the recent catastrophe and the sufferings it engendered come as no surprise. However, our enhanced public role is of more recent origin; the general view of our professional activities has not incorporated changes. We will be looking to our marketing consultants for help in correcting the negative image of psychoanalysis.
In the meantime, an important starting point is for us to recognize these developments and appreciate that this evolution in the American Psychoanalytic Association reflects the changing identity of the psychoanalyst of today.