“Analysis is paralysis,” remarked Richard Suttell, a retired General Electric Executive, former Marine and President of the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Foundation. Suttell made his comment last spring in his presentation to the 10th Annual Committee on Foundations Meeting held in Cleveland. He described his role and effort in helping the Cleveland Institute, Society and psychoanalytic community reorganize and create the new Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center.
Though a strong advocate and supporter of psychoanalysis, Suttell recognized that applying certain psychoanalytic principles to organizational issues and the problems organized psychoanalysis faces today backfires. The lessons learned in Cleveland are important ones for many Institutes, Societies and Foundations across the country who are struggling with low morale, few analytic patients, few candidates, and bleak futures. As Suttell pointed out, business, academic and other non-profit organizations strategically plan their futures. But analysts in Cleveland, at Suttell's urging, had to sit down one weekend with an outside professional consultant and hash out various needs of the group and then arrive at constructive compromise. As Suttell reminded the group, compromise is a “win-win” for all and the future of psychoanalysis in Cleveland.
During the process of reorganization, a non-analyst executive director with twenty years of non-profit organizational experience was hired and assisted in the Center's creation from the ground up. The new Cleveland “experience,” is one of more candidates, new psychoanalytic programs in the community, successful grant writing to support those programs and high morale.
Where will organized psychoanalysis be in five, ten and twenty years if we consider what occurred over the last twenty? In Chicago, another businessman and community member of the Board of Trustees at the Chicago Institute predicted, “We will be out of business if things don't change.” His remark was made in the midst of a recent fiscal crisis after years of operating the large Institute at a significant deficit and slowly eating up the endowment. Tensions emerged between the Board of Trustees (mostly community members) and institute Faculty. Mistrust and accusation, often the symptom of financial tension and poor organizational planning, emerged. Finally, the air was cleared and a strategic planning committee made up of faculty, Board, candidates and staff was created to address the future of the Chicago Institute.
Experiences in Cleveland and Chicago must be considered, but we're up against resistance, or more clearly stated, lack of experience and fear of change. At another recent COF Annual meeting in San Francisco, one community Foundation member remarked, “When I mention strategic planning, the analysts gaze at me like I'm talking a foreign language.”
Yet without such planning, members of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Foundation can attest to problems. The Michigan Institute and Foundation are often viewed as the examples of where psychoanalysis must go if it is to survive far into the future. Their presence and liaison in the community, with many candidates from diverse professional and ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and successful fundraising have been a model to many other Institutes and Foundations. However, even in Michigan a crisis occurred. A year and a half ago an anonymous donation of $100,000 for candidate scholarships became entangled in a struggle between conflicting agendas of the Foundation Board and the Education Council. As one analyst put it, “Once the really big money finally started coming in, that's when the problems really began.” That $100,000 check sat unused for months and was almost rescinded by the donor until the conflict was solved. Sadly, many of those involved resigned from important and effective positions in the Foundation and the cost of that struggle was high.
Organized psychoanalysis faces many challenges today. Our recent marketing study clearly outlines what analysts and institutes must do in order to once again regain a respectful presence in communities and among mental health professionals, prospective patients and candidates, and in the public at large. Members of the COF have learned over the years how essential our community Foundation members are, both in terms of their expertise and their assistance in helping us meet our goals.
Mark D. Smaller, Ph.D., Co-chairs the Committee on Foundations and is a Board Member of the American Psychoanalytic Foundation.
The news is not all gloomy. In Portland, only a foundation existed for many years, organized and developed almost single handedly by Selma Duckler, currently Co-chair of COF. Two and a half years ago, analysts and community people took a chance and decided to give a new structure a try and see how things would go. The move was certainly not “psychoanalytic” — that is, acting was more important than analyzing. Things have gone well. The Institute and Foundation merged, similar to Cleveland, and recently became a legal entity. The new Oregon Psychoanalytic Center has a Board of Trustees made up mostly of community members in addition to analysts. Four divisions of the Center will be: Clinical Education, Community Outreach, Community Collaboration, and Development.
Lee Shershow of Portland reports, “We view starting the Center as just a beginning of revitalized and integrated efforts to expand psychoanalysis in Portland.” With their successful consultation to day-care and nursery programs as one example, psychoanalysis is alive and well in the community, clearly beyond the educating of analysts and analysts' consulting rooms.
Last December, in his outgoing remarks as President of the American Psychoanalytic Foundation, Harvey Rich, former Chair of COF, suggested, “I never worry about the future of psychoanalysis. That will be around for years to come. I do, however worry about the future of psychoanalysts.” Until psychoanalysts recognize how many of their organizations are in trouble, change existing structures (in some instances structures that were created seventy or eighty years ago when psychoanalysis arrived from Europe) and create new ones that facilitate community involvement, public information, and a real and useful presence in the world, our future remains in jeopardy. Places like Cleveland, Portland, and others are providing new directions. Let's hope we are all open enough to learn from their experiences. Join us for our 11th Annual COF Meeting April 25th in Pittsburgh where we will continue to address these matters. Our professional futures may depend on it.