A bylaw amendment regarding certification has been proposed by a group of members and will be considered by Council and BOPS in June before being sent to members after-wards. The bylaw amendment proposes that certification shall no longer be an APsaA requirement for appointment as training analyst, though individual institutes may continue to require this. Under our current bylaws, potential candidates in analysis with non-certified members often forego training or apply to non-APsaA institutes in order to continue their analyses. [See “What Next?”, page 5.]
To require potential applicants to interrupt a working treatment and terminate an effective analytic relationship for reasons of protocol is unanalytic. There is no evidence that certified analysts treat candidates more effectively than non-certified analysts, and in the recent Strategic Planning Survey, the lack of member interest in certification was indicated by ranking it last in a list of activities that APsaA should pursue.
The majority of graduates do not apply for certification because they find it arbitrary, time consuming, and of dubious professional value. This means that the proportion of certified analysts will decrease and the problem posed by the certification requirement will increase over time.
Institute educators, motivated by a love of our profession, will continue to maintain standards of excellence in training. Some institutes may continue to see certification as valuable and retain it as a requirement.
Local option can thus be viewed as the next step in a long, historic process in American psychoanalysis that will ultimately strengthen our Association by valuing contributions of all its members, while continuing to utilize the guidance and encouragement of BOPS.
Arnold D. Richards, M.D., is training and supervising analyst, New York Psychoanalytic Institute; former editor of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and founding editor of The American Psychoanalyst (TAP).