My term as chair of the Board on Professional Standards will end after the meetings in San Francisco in June. When I wrote my first column as BOPS's chair, I said I was committed to continuous self-appraisal. I think this is a good time to apply that principle to the past three years.
Being the chair of the Board on Professional Standards has been a great privilege. As a member of the Executive Committee, I have had an opportunity to observe and participate in all of the many activities of our Association. There are problems that currently challenge our profession and its institutions, but psychoanalysis is vital and active. The Association retains an intellectual role worldwide, is excellently educating substantial numbers of students as analysts and therapists, is engaged in important social activism, and is treating and helping many people, adults and children, clinically.
Often the most visible aspect of a Board chair's duties seems to be the contentious quality of some of our public debates. However, many real and valuable accomplishments occur without fanfare and with a minimum of conflict. When conflict does occur, a civil discussion and comprehensive consideration of the contending viewpoints have usually led to principled resolution and workable and wise decisions.
I would like to call attention to several progressive accomplishments that took place during the past three years. Although I am choosing a few initiatives to highlight, I do not mean to slight the excellent work of many others. These are just my personal list of developments that seem particularly noteworthy to me.
The Committee on Research Education (CORE) has become an active and productive reality. From an idealized concept, it has taken shape as a standing committee of the Board under the leadership of Stuart Hauser and Robert Emde. The committee has taken steps to survey and promote research education in every one of our training programs. It has started projects to study certification procedures, is collaborating with the Committee on Institutes to promote the inclusion of research education in psychoanalytic training, is consulting with the Committee on Child and Adolescent Analysis, and has raised everyone's consciousness about the role of empirical research as a part of our educational mission. Hauser and Emde have served as research advisors to the Board and Coordinating Committee. During the first BOPS meeting that I chaired, I promised, “Where opinion is, there shall data be,” and CORE has begun to fulfill that promise.
Our certification methods and organizational structure were carefully and thoroughly studied. Members' views were surveyed and a task force led by Cal Narcisi and Donald Rosenblitt developed a comprehensive blueprint to further advance the methodology and utility of our certification system. We have already implemented some of the proposals that were recommended.
After the June meetings, the current Committee on Certification will divide into two standing committees of the Board. One, the Certification Examination Committee (CEC) will administer the assessment of applicants. It will increase its membership and develop procedures to make the entire process transparent and as user friendly as possible. Kirsten Dahl will be its first chair.
The other standing committee will be the Certification Advisory, Research, and Development Committee (CARD). Its first chair will be Cal Narcisi. This committee will help evaluate the validity and reliability of our certification process and suggest means to improve our methods. It will be composed of members who bring a wide range of skills in research and testing methodology.
The Child and Adolescent Committee has begun an experimental project in “child-only” training. Four pilot programs were selected to gain experience training some candidates in child and adolescent psychoanalysis without training in adult psychoanalysis. The Denver, St. Louis, Columbia, and Houston-Galveston Institutes have begun to accept trainees under this new initiative. In an approach that is flexible and evaluative, progress and outcome measures of training are being developed and applied.. We hope it will be a model for innovative approaches to improve and expand opportunities for psychoanalytic education.
A task force headed by Myrna Weiss has been reviewing our standards and methods for approving training and supervising analysts. The goal is to make progression to training analyst and the selection and evaluation of applicants positive, flexible, and rational, while minimizing bureaucratic barriers. The task force has found that our system works well, but there is need to inform our members about our procedures and their rationale. A sharing of responsibilities between institutes and APsaA continues to be an important and useful aspect of our system.
Finally, the Committee on Free-Standing Institutes, chaired by Eric Nuetzel, has continued to develop relationships with psychoanalytic training institutes outside of the APsaA system. This has been a progressive process, but a delicate one. There are several training programs that have high standards, a long record of achievement, and similar perspectives to our current APsaA institutes. We would like to find a way to formalize affiliation with them. Perhaps, some of them would like to join our family of institutes. However, each has its own history and proud tradition. We are committed to decreasing institutional barriers and allying with training facilities that want to join with us in a common mission.
These are just some of the many activities that have progressed under my chairmanship. Thank you for your support and good wishes during my term of office. I look forward to continuing to serve our Association in the future and to maintaining the valued relationships I have made with colleagues. I also look forward to seeing our Association and the BOPS thrive and prosper under the leadership of Jon Meyer and Eric Nuetzel.