Strategic marketing studies, strategic plans, retreats, and task forces are all tools organizations, including ours, use to promote change. A couple of years ago, APsaA invested heavily in a strategic marketing project, coordinated by committee chair Glenn Good and professional consultant Lee Zacharias. The report, formally issued in August 2002, delivered the distressing news that as an organization and a profession we are seen by non-analytic mental health colleagues as arrogant, close-minded, elitist, exclusive, unwelcoming, and insular. Some of us were shocked, others not surprised, others probably not interested.
The problem with such big investments in organizational change is follow-through. And follow-up. Does change actually occur after a plan or a retreat or a task force report? Does a diagnosis lead to treatment? The last TAP included a report by Allan Compton on the Omnibus Science Initiative, a plan to increase the presence of psychoanalytic science within our organization that culminated in a set of recommendations in 2000. The report card on the effectiveness of the Omnibus Science Initiative is excellent.
How have the findings and recommendations of the Strategic Marketing Report fared in the year since their delivery? At an all-day symposium on marketing held at the June 2003 APsaA meeting, a gathering of experts each gave an answer to the question: What struck you most about the strategic marketing report?
Mel Bornstein, the sole analyst on the panel, urged that we give attention to the meanings and motivations among members that contribute to the situations cited in the marketing report. Bornstein described a pervasive insular attitude that he feels is antithetical to the genuine ideals of psychoanalysis and our organization and leads to splits and difficulty dealing with narcissistic injuries, humiliation, and betrayals.
Author/social historian Douglas Kirsner wondered: Were our problems due to an authoritarian structure left over from fin de siecle Vienna? He pointed to other possible themes. The data of psychoanalysis are based on secret relationships, causing knowledge to be transmitted “esoterically.” (The dictionary definition of “esoteric” is “private, secret, belonging to the select few.”) Analysts as a group are self-preoccupied and tend to not pay sufficient attention to outcome or effectiveness, says Kirsner. This internal focus, Kirsner believes, leads to haughtiness and causes people to see us as unintellectual. Fundamentally, there is too big a gap between the level of claimed knowledge and actual knowledge. Claimed knowledge is the basis of accreditation, certification, training analyst anointment. Our hierarchical structures are rife with this. Kirsner's prescription: We must change the organizational mindset vis-à-vis claimed vs. real knowledge.
Bernard Gertler is a group relations expert and an analyst with the William Alanson White Institute. He charged us to pay more attention to group processes within our organization. The individual model of psychoanalysis overemphasizes the individual at the expense of the organizational levels of understanding. Gertler's main point was that we have many competing tasks that should be clearly articulated. A systems framework is needed to understand our problems more thoroughly, and there needs to be greater permeability between the organization and its external environment.
Sybil Stershic, speaking as a marketing professional, explained the special features involved in marketing a service such as analysis or training. Services, as opposed to commodities, are intangible, created and consumed simultaneously, time-perishable, and have uneven quality because of human factors. Consumers evaluate services based on reliability (doing what was promised), assurance (conveying trust and confidence), tangible factors (e.g., clean, attractive spaces), empathy (do staff care?), and responsiveness. This list highlighted the crucial task of evaluating our potential patient's or student's experience from initial point of contact (publication or phone call) through delivery of service. Summarizing Stershic's perspective in a report to the membership, Jim Hansell.who chaired a briefer symposium based on the all-day session at the June meeting, reported on the symposium's finding to the membership. He said, “We need to be aware that every interaction we engage in represents our ‘brand’ and shapes our public image.”
What has happened concretely since the marketing report was issued to address the issues raised? On a national level:
We have a new quarterly publication, Forward!, edited by Sandy Walker, that reports on “best practices”—successful local outreach and marketing efforts that are exportable to other locales.
APsaA hired Dottie Jeffries as staff director of Public Affairs.
President Newell Fischer has been traveling around the country visiting nearly 40 societies and institutes and holding town meetings to present the report and discuss local responses. Newell shows a video of the non-analyst mental health professional focus groups, where our colleagues dissect us in most unflattering terms.
Each TAP is now reviewed by a board member looking solely for unwitting instances of “arrogance.” Our aim is to have one of the organization's most visible publications avoid unwitting instances of arrogance or exclusivity in our language or focus.
A new membership proposal is in the works, with the aim of making it easier for non-APsaA graduates who are qualified analysts to join the organization.
A network of local analysts has been established to promote marketing and outreach locally and to share ideas.
Training workshops in marketing, as described above, are held annually at the national meetings. A new brochure on child analysis has been published.
Continuing, innumerable public information successes including the special edition of U.S. News and World Report that features Freud, Einstein, and Marx; Kerry Sulkowicz's appearing in Real Simple; The New York Times; and coverage of the Winter 2003 meeting in Psychiatric News, The Wall Street Journal, and Clinical Psychiatry News.
APsaA's overall graphic image has been totally revamped, showing up in our new logo, TAP, Forward!, and other publications. Designer Andrea Schettino's graphic design is meant to convey a more modern, open, and congenial image.
There's a great deal more to be done. The main task is not to forget that the problem needs ongoing, targeted action.