When I joined APsaA nine years ago as an affiliate member, I was new to psychoanalytic organizations, but I was no stranger to organizational life. I had served on a variety of charitable boards and had developed some expertise in the area of corporate governance as an attorney in the not-for-profit sector. I soon discovered that APsaA, like many of the organizations I had worked with, was not exempt from its own stressful developmental changes.
This is even truer today. One has only to read the Openline for a few minutes to realize that APsaA is in a state of disequilibrium. Perhaps, this is because APsaA is still engaged in a long overdue developmental progression from the founders' organization it had been (for longer than the lives of many of the founders themselves) to the more mature organization it is in the process of becoming. This has produced a tension between the need to change and the fear of change.
Nine years ago this was primarily manifested in issues of internal and external inclusion and exclusion. Among these were controversies involving the admission process for non-medical members, the selection and composition of committees, and the status of uncertified and affiliate members in organizational life. Now the tension is focused not only on the “who” of the organization, but on the “what”—the structure of the organization itself as articulated in its by-laws. Although this tension is inevitable, it has produced considerable anxiety. The reason this is happening now, almost a century after APsaA was founded, probably has to do with an organizational resistance that has loosened only in the last decade or two. In an effort to place what APsaA is currently experiencing in a larger perspective, it is helpful to understand the developmental progression of nonprofit organizations.
A non-profit organization is unique. It is not formed to make money (although it can) but to fulfill a passion. People with a shared vision and commitment come together to form the organization. This new group is very cohesive, bound by the excitement and satisfaction that come from creating something new. The skills and personalities of the founders are usually well suited to their birthing task. Their fervent belief in their mission and their ability to convince others of its value facilitate the raising of seed money and attract new adherents to their cause. There is little dissent and lots of energy.
As the organization prospers and grows, changes occur which disrupt the heady excitement and cohesiveness of the early years. The founders may tire and age. Also, the skills that worked so well to start the organization are often different from those required to build and maintain it. Changes occur in the external environment and the membership that require a fresh perspective.
Although new blood is needed, the cohesiveness of the founders and their shared history and vision are threatened by the arrival of newcomers. While some founders worry that the newcomers will bring perspectives that will undermine their original vision, others see new perspectives and change as necessary for survival. As cohesiveness is replaced by a splintering into opposing camps, tension develops.
An extreme example from my pre-psychoanalytic days involved a “shadow government.” When the organization's official leadership committee would call a meeting, the members who represented the founder's faction would meet first and then come to the official meeting having already reached a group decision on the items yet to be discussed, rendering the official meeting a sham. Until power could shift to the official group from the founder's group, the organization was stuck. Morale was low, new members drifted away, and vitality was threatened. A closed system with power concentrated in too few made extinction a real possibility.
A maturing organization must find a balance between the past and the future.
A maturing organization must find a balance between the past and the future. This requires not only different leadership skills from those needed for gestation, birth, and early nurturing, but perhaps also a more flexible worldview. Boundaries need to become more permeable; the internal structure must be able to respond to changes in the external and internal environments. Looking ahead becomes as central as dealing with present issues. As a result, subtle changes in the mission and structure of the organization may occur. Ideally those changes will be evolutionary and not revolutionary, reflecting an ongoing dialogue between the organizational leadership, its members, and other constituents.
In order to survive, an organization must accept change as a given and have mechanisms in place to respond to change in a non-threatening and non-threatened way. Focused discussion groups or retreats that get members thinking about organizational goals and long range planning processes to realize those goals can direct an organization toward a shared sense of the future just as the founders had a shared sense of the past. Conflict can then be replaced by a renewed articulation of the mission (perhaps somewhat altered from the original) to be accomplished through mutually agreed upon goals and objectives.
Where cohesiveness in the founders' organization was a given, the need to build
consensus among more diverse views is the necessary condition for the next step in development. Dissent cannot be the enemy Instead there has to be a structure in place for the safe expression and acknowledgement of opposing views.
The recent governance controversy in APsaA seems to represent the continuing transition from the founders' “American” toward today's APsaA and everything the changed name signifies. The fact that the sides seemed so polarized is symptomatic of APsaA's difficulty in dealing with disagreement at this stage in its development. But what is equally significant is that there were forums where opposing views could be expressed. The outcome of the by-laws amendment vote is less important than that there was such an election in the first place. As Michael Maccoby points out in his piece in this section, our challenge is to keep a healthy dialogue going in a way that fosters collaboration despite differences. It appears that APsaA is headed that way even if the road is bumpy.