When I was a kid, enamored of football in an era that anteceded “special teams” and offensive and defensive players, there was a category of hombre referred to as a “triple threat.” He could run, pass, and kick — and then play defense. He could do anything and everything. Not so anymore: The game has become too demanding. Football's complexity has escalated exponentially. Like everything else in life, it is challenge enough to develop some expertise and to practice it in a concentrated area.
Would that it were this simple to understand what accounts for the decline in interest among members in considering running for major officer positions in the Association. It is difficult to say when this trend began, but over the past several years the task of finding candidates for elected APsaA positions has changed dramatically. What was once a paring down has become a sometimes desperate search for possibilities.
There was a time when it was possible for an individual to be a busily practicing analyst, involved in the usual local society and other professional activities, and serve as president of the American Psychoanalytic Association — and still have a life. Leading the national organization was a plausible, part-time activity, some thirty-five years ago. But times have changed, and so has the Association.
The jobs at the top have become or could certainly be full-time enterprises in themselves, because the organization has become much more than a membership group for like-minded professionals. Being a top-level executive in the APsaA requires one to be just that: an organizational executive.
All this is brought home resoundingly to anyone who has participated in the annual search for potential, qualified candidates for office. Even experienced members show an unprecedented lack of desire to go to the top of the administrative ladder. The most frequently cited reasons for declining potential nomination are strikingly consistent and widespread. They are roughly as follows.
The top positions on the Executive Committee demand too much work, especially on top of one's “day job.” Many feel there is not enough administrative staff support for an organizational enterprise like ours. There is way too little financial remuneration for the top positions, which have developed into full-time responsibilities.
These positions require too many additional personal sacrifices. The work impinges on primary professional involvements with practice, writing, and so on; on personal and family relationships; and on one's financial situation. Some say that running for and occupying office in the Association requires significant financial resources of one's own to sustain the investments in travel and time away from practice or other work.
The increasing complexity and expansion of tasks is daunting, especially with the increased emphasis on political and governmental interactions, often-challenging (if not downright adversarial) involvements with other professional groups, and issues dealing with public relations and marketing. Many have little preparation or interest in these kinds of activities that are outside their training or expertise. (Only recently has APsaA hired a staffer to head up the organization's public information activities.)
Officers can be exposed to the ambivalence of their colleagues at best and plain abuse at worst. A number of individuals who were contacted about running for office commented on the leadership's being targeted for complaints and grievances inappropriately. To some extent, this must be expected of a leadership position in any group of any kind. One will be the object of transferences of all varieties. Depending on the nature of the unconscious group fantasies, these can take a variety of forms from expectable or appropriate ambivalence to pure paranoia.
There is a growing distaste among many for the increasingly politicized campaign process. While members want to preserve a choice of candidates and open elections, to run for office now requires considerable financial and time commitments. Those who lose a campaign often are bitter about these costs and have little desire to try again. None of these folks are in politics as a career, and many are reluctant to run against colleagues who may be friends or predictable winners in a contest.
Many individuals who would make attractive candidates for national office are very involved in their local organizations, which can be just as demanding. Often these members are just too busy, too dedicated to their communities, or too tired by the time they complete their tenure to consider pursuing or accomplishing the even larger agendas of the national group.
Finally, after all the above is said and done, many feel that the rewards are too small and too few.
Clearly, on the practical level, something needs to be changed in the administrative structure and staffing of the organization, since there is a widespread perception that the jobs to run the railroad are either impossible in themselves or impossibly inconsistent with life outside the organization. Equally obvious is the charged ambivalence about some central features of the organization. This is articulated somewhat in the Open Line discussions, the “Wednesday Group,” the occasional piece in TAP, at the
Erik Cann, M.D., is the former chair of the Exploratory Subcommittee of the Nominating Committee and continues to chair the Committee on Psychoanalytic Practice. He is a past president of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute and Society, where he is a training and supervising analyst.
local levels, and in the quieter, suppressed murmurings in the real and virtual hallways of our professional lives. Manifestly, we are concerned about the future of psychoanalysis itself.
All of the above must be reckoned with effectively and soon, but there is something else we should address. If we as psychoanalysts really believe in unconscious psychological processes, then we must endeavor to understand the unconscious group conflicts in our Association that contribute forcefully to the symptomatology. We are not on the whole as adept or practiced at this as we are in working with individuals. If, however, we are willing to broaden our “consciousness” as a group to grapple with these unconscious forces as well as the more obvious logistical and structural ones, the opportunities to enliven our larger-scale work and to reinvest our leadership and administrative positions with respect and enthusiasm will undoubtedly expand and reinforce the best of what we have to offer our members and the world beyond.
It should be an honor to lead this Association that any one of us would like to consider. As Eric Severeid once put it, it should be “not so wild a dream.”