Necessity has presented our Association with a unique opportunity. Consultation with a lawyer who is expert in not-for-profit state laws has confirmed that we are not in compliance with New York's laws. A letter was sent to each of our members by our president and president-elect summarizing the areas that required revisions in our governance:
Our Executive Council (our board of directors) is not organized according to our certificate of incorporation.
The Executive Committee is not constituted according to the law's requirements.
Our committees, and especially our finance committee, are not in compliance with the law's definitions and requirements.
The Board on Professional Standards' place in the Association is not easily defined under the law.
Finally our business meeting of members is conceived differently from the law's expectations.
Many of our members and most of our leaders have realized for years that we operate pretty well despite our structure and not because of it.
Of these problems, the place of BOPS may be the most complicated to change structurally.
APsaA has been considering its structure for many years. Committees and task forces dating back at least to 1992 have been appointed to try to improve our system of governance and help us to achieve our goals with less conflict and strife. Several of these ad hoc bodies have suggested that we need a more effective structure for our board of directors. Almost every group studying our governance has tried to define the relationship between the Board on Professional Standards and the Executive Council as board of directors. The most recent attempt to accomplish this was the education and membership initiative that defined a consultative relationship between the two bodies and reaffirmed a portion of BOPS's responsibilities as semi-autonomous. Our recent by-laws revisions implemented some of the recommendations of the education and membership task force.
Now, under the pressure of compliance with state law, we must again reconsider our structure and functioning. Many of our members and most of our leaders have realized for years that we operate pretty well despite our structure and not because of it. In that sense, we now have a very real opportunity to do it better.
APsaA tries to accomplish many competing objectives simultaneously.
We try to represent the professional interests and needs of our members.
We advocate for our discipline and for favorable conditions to accomplish our clinical and other obligations.
We develop national standards for psychoanalytic education and educational institutions.
We accredit institutes as approved training centers.
We certify individuals as demonstrating a national standard of competence.
We determine the requirements for eligibility for membership in our Association.
We try to define the range of practices that our. Association endorses as psychoanalysis.
We provide a national forum for our societies and institutes.
We advocate for and try to improve funding for research.
We try to be inclusive of like-minded professionals and those friendly to psychoanalysis.
This list is not exhaustive; nor would all agree that every item is fundamental to our Association.
I advocate an extensive and intensive self-assessment by our organization. We need to define what kind of organization we want to be as we go forward and what functions and constituencies we want to include. Accomplishing such a review and achieving a consensus about the form and structure of our Association needed to accomplish these functions will require much good will. We must respect all of the diverse viewpoints within APsaA. This will not be an easy task, but it is a worthwhile one at this crossroads in our history.
To help accomplish this task, I have appointed a BOPS Task Force on Reorganization. I have asked Eric Nuetzel and Leon Hoffman to serve as co-chairs. The members of the task force are all either past BOPS chairs or current councilors-at-large. I have asked the task force to do the following:
Consider the functions of the Board on Professional Standards and its committees and to advise me and the Board about the optimal structure of our Association that will facilitate those functions in compliance with state laws.
Educate the APsaA membership about the functions of the Board on Professional Standards and the about the optimal structure of our Association that will facilitate those functions in compliance with state laws.
Inform the Executive Council, in accordance with the mutual consultative role mandated by the education and membership agreement, about the functions of the Board on Professional Standards and about
Ronald Benson, M.D., is chair of BOPS.
the optimal structure of our Association that will facilitate those functions in compliance with state laws.
I assume and hope that other groups within APsaA, as well as local institutes and societies, will address these matters from their own perspectives. The broadest and deepest understanding of the many issues, and the most informed debate with the widest possible participation of stakeholders, will be the most conducive atmosphere for redefining ourselves.
At this juncture, we should attempt to identify and define the major issues comprehensively. Some of them will surely conflict with one another and require balancing worthwhile objectives against one another rather than a pure and ideal resolution. Piecemeal solutions are apt to create more difficulty and are unlikely to lead to consensus or an overall improvement in our structure or governance.
Inevitably, power issues, turf guarding, and narrow vision will be part of the ongoing process. I hope that in the end, mutual respect and collegiality will result in consensus. If so, we can reinvent our Association to be prepared to meet the challenges of the future.
Even while this important attention to our governance is taking place, the work of the Association must continue. In that spirit, I have appointed two other task forces. The Task Force on Training Analysis, chaired by Myrna Weiss, will review our appointment standards and procedures for TAs and suggest beneficial revisions consistent with BOPS' responsibility to ensure that every candidate have an analysis of depth and high quality. This group will specifically address the problem of potential candidates in analysis with non-TAs.
The Task Force on Recruitment will be chaired by Philip Herschenfeld. Many of our institutes note a trend toward applicants who seek training later in their careers and later in life. While we welcome such applicants, beginning psychoanalytic training earlier has many advantages. The recruitment task force will consider this matter.
I believe that all three task forces are forward-looking and will help to ensure the ongoing health of our Association.