It has been more than a decade since APsaA membership concerns about certification prompted Arnold Richards, then editor of TAP, to solicit twenty articles from members and publish them in a special TAP supplement that appeared in the fall of 1990. At that time, certification was the only road to full APsaA membership. The controversy over whether to continue linking membership to certification filled TAP's pages with lively debate and discussion.
Last fall, our editorial board decided to develop a TAP contribution to inform the growing member interest in and concern about the current certification process. We decided to use the format of an expanded special section. TAP editor Prudy Gourguechon asked me to organize a plan for the discussion, identify APsaA members with known views about certification principles and procedures, and invite them to write brief articles highlighting their perspectives. We also sought contributions from authors who could provide background information for the discussion. With the significant help of TAP editorial board members Abbot Bronstein, Lee Jaffe, and Janice Lieberman, and the cooperation of members who agreed to write for TAP, we are able to offer this special section.
As we finalized our list of contributors, a number of important certification-related developments were taking place, culminating in the joint Executive Council and BOPS decision to appoint a task force to poll members' attitudes about psychoanalytic certification. The APsaA Joint Task Force on Certification Survey was mandated on January 31, 2001, to distribute its questionnaire within ten days of the publication of TAP's certification issue. The task force wants not only to find out how fair and meaningful we think the current certification procedure is, but also to understand something about how we view psychoanalytic certification in general. It also seeks to know if we would endorse psychoanalytic recertification. Along related lines, we will be asked about whether we want the APsaA to continue conducting certification examinations and whether we think that BOPS should no longer require certification as a precondition for becoming a training analyst or a Fellow of the Board. According to APsaA secretary Lynne Moritz, speaking for the Executive Committee, these member views will inform the Association's deliberative bodies, both BOPS and Council, as they work to address these issues.
Whatever the outcome of the survey, some of the essential features of the current certification controversy are to be found in the articles in this issue. We sincerely thank all of the authors for their thoughtful and articulate presentations of their ideas. They have made a significant contribution to the debate about the role that psychoanalytic certification should play in shaping the future of psychoanalysis.
Photo by Nic Gourguechon
Stephen Portuges, Ph.D., is associate editor of TAP. He is president of the Psychoanalytic Research Society (Section VI of Division 39 of the American Psychological Association). He is on the faculty of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute and chair of its doctoral program. His science column will appear in the next issue of TAP.