ApsaA is increasing its efforts to cultivate child and adolescent psychoanalysis. The new Council Committee on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis (COCAP) is up and running. Dick Fox, when he was APsaA president, appointed the committee, with Cal Narcisi as chair, and charged it with raising the profile of child and adolescent analysis within APsaA and throughout the country.
Although the Board on Professional Standards has long had a committee focused on child and adolescent issues in education, the Committee on Child and Adolescent Analysis (COCAA), there has never been a Council committee on child analysis. The Executive Council's COCAP now permits the organization to focus more energy on practice, outreach, and alliances with other child and adolescent groups.
Because their missions are complementary, COCAP is working collaboratively with COCAA. For example, after petitioning the APsaA Program Committee, the two committees were granted one designated child and adolescent panel and one two-day child-adolescent clinical workshop. As a result, at the 2004 Winter APsaA meetings, there was a panel on adoption and a two-day clinical
Calvern Narcisi, M.D., the chair of COCAP, is training and supervising analyst at The Denver Institute in Adult, Child, and Adolescent Analysis; clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine; and former secretary and acting chair of BOPS.
Ruth Karush, M.D., is chair of COCAA, training and supervising analyst and chair of the Child/Adolescent Analytic Program at New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and president of the Association for Child Psychoanalysis.
workshop on defense analysis with children and adolescents. The new panel and workshop will be held at each of our national meetings for at least the next three years while the Program Committee evaluates interest and success. To foster this close collaborative relationship between the Board and Council committees, Leon Hoffman, vice-chair of COCAA was appointed co-chair of COCAP.
In addition, COCAA has always sponsored workshops for institute representatives, which are held during each meeting of APsaA.
There has not always been such recognition of child and adolescent analysis. Until 1951, the Board on Professional Standards took little notice of child psychoanalytic training. In December of that year, Ives Hendrick, chairman of the Board, appointed Sarah Bonnett to head a Subcommittee on Standards of Training for Child Psychoanalysis. By 1958, the subcommittee, with the help of representatives from the four existing child training programs, had proposed a preliminary set of minimal standards and recommended the establishment of a standing Committee on Child and Adolescent Analysis. Around the same time, a standing BOPS committee, COCAA, was appointed and charged:
to delineate and define child psychoanalysis and the child psychoanalytic techniques;
to set and maintain standards for training in child psychoanalysis;
to stimulate and develop new training programs in child and adolescent psychoanalysis;
to determine and advance the contribution to be made from child psychoanalysis to psychoanalytic training generally.
Fulfilling these charges has occupied COCAA ever since.
During the early years, stimulating and developing new programs were in the forefront. Thanks to these efforts, there are currently 21 approved programs and one provisional program, training a total of 189 child and adolescent candidates. Concurrently with the development of new training programs, COCAA worked on the formulation of minimal standards for training so APsaA could certify that graduates had achieved competency as child and adolescent psychoanalysts. After several years of discussion and revision, the first set of standards was established in 1966, representing a consensus of child psychoanalysts from all over the country. These were revised in 1977 and have been revised by COCAA as necessary.
A member of COCAA is appointed to each site visit subcommittee of the Committee on Institutes whether or not the institute visited has a program in child and adolescent analysis. COCAA is also responsible for reviewing applications of all child and adolescent supervisory appointments and for making a recommendation to the Board. More recently, COCAA has started pilot programs at Columbia, Denver, Houston-Galveston, and St. Louis, in which candidates can apply for training in child and adolescent psychoanalysis without having to pursue adult training as well. (See Penelope Hooks's article, page 7 for a description of one of these programs.)
In June, the Board approved a COCAA proposal that a candidate in a combined training program who completes the child and adolescent portion be considered for graduation even if the student has not yet finished the adult training. The candidate must have completed the didactic work and be well along the path to graduation from the adult training, if graduation from child and adolescent training is granted first.
Now, with the advent of COCAP, three other areas of importance to child and adolescent psychoanalysis will be added to the APsaA agenda:
to increase child and adolescent psychoanalytic practice and thereby insure its survival.
to work with and educate other child-oriented groups, both within APsaA and in the larger mental health community, about the contributions of child and adolescent psychoanalysis.
to increase the visibility of child analysts within APsaA and to show the influence of child and adolescent theory and technique on psychoanalysis.
In fact, COCAP and COCAA are collaborating broadly to accomplish these challenging goals. APsaA has a new brochure, “All About Psychoanalysis for Children and Adolescents,” initiated by COCAA and co-published by COCAA and COCAP. A joint outcome study chaired by Leon Hoffman has been initiated with the resources of the two committees. (See his article, page 8 for details.) Also, at each of our national meetings, COCAA and COCAP are hosting well-attended receptions for child analysts, child candidates, and all interested in working with children.
We have begun the essential work of building alliances with other child and adolescent groups, including the Association for Child Psychoanalysis, The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the International Psychoanalytical Association, the Anna Freud Centre, Zero to Three, the newly formed Alliance of Psychoanalytic Schools, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. What's more, COCAP has established the Children and Family Service Award for the best community application of child/adolescent psychoanalytic principles. The first award was given to The Allen Creek Preschool of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Thus, from its embryonic beginnings over 50 years ago, APsaA has increasingly included child and adolescent psychoanalysis, both in our institute training programs, in our meetings, and in all other aspects of organizational life. Child and adolescent psychoanalysis is truly a profession that has come into its own.