The history of the Affiliate Council is a chronicle of the ever-increasing move within the American Psychoanalytic Association to strengthen the voice of candidates throughout our organization. In its 11-year history, the Affiliate Council has evolved into a powerful vehicle for change through its leadership and advocacy for candidates throughout the country. Our efforts led to important victories like achieving full voting rights for all affiliate members. Increasingly, Board and Council committees have opened their doors to candidates and have found them an invaluable part of their committees. We have made our presence known at all levels of the organization through our participation, enthusiasm, and hopefulness for the integrity and continuing relevance of our profession.
As I assume my term as president of the Affiliate Council, I find myself empowered by our Association's strategic planning activities for allocation of resources for our future as a profession, a science, and an organization. There are many threats to our profession with the encroachment of managed care, an emphasis on evidence-based medicine, short-term manualized treatment approaches, and a society that is increasingly looking to find quick relief from what ails it.
However, my mission is of a different sort. We have a wealth of talented, capable, and bright professionals who have much to offer but are burdened with the high cost of training, running a practice, and the demands of family life. They need guidance, mentorship, and sometimes a warm personal invitation before they can feel safe enough to come to the national meetings. With these goals in mind, we have developed several programs to help foster candidates at all stages of their careers. We invite members to take an active role in helping candidates to develop their talents and to usher them into the richness that our Association has to offer. Here is the starting line-up and other works in progress.
The Affiliate Council will kick off this initiative with its Leadership Academy during the upcoming meeting in Seattle. Led by Georgia Royalty, a candidate at the Baltimore Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis with years of experience consulting on leadership development, we hope to reach out to candidates and delegates representing the 32 psychoanalytic training programs in the country. Leadership is a huge subject about which much has been written, but our goals are to help identify our individual and collective strengths, talents, and limitations and set an agenda that will move us forward and outward as we address the concerns of candidates throughout the country.
We have made our presence known at all levels of the organization through our participation, enthusiasm, and hopefulness for the integrity and continuing relevance of our profession.
In January 2006, Hilary Rubenstein takes us on a new journey of discovery as we welcome the candidates from the New York University Psychoanalytic Institute who have started a new journal, The Candidate. Through their work, we hope to develop a series of programs to help cultivate and engage leadership through academic scholarship and encourage prospective analysts to begin writing early in their professional development. We are fortunate to have Steven Levy, the editor of JAPA, join our efforts as a co-leader in this series on “beginnings” in analytic writing that focuses on candidates' initiation into psychoanalysis and exploring the parallel process in treatment. The emphasis will be on examining what breeds creative thinking and what inhibits it through both writing and clinical work. [See “Candidates Launch an Online Journal of Their Own,” page 23.]
I want to also invite our leading psychoanalytic researchers to help us develop a series of programs that will serve to educate and inspire the future researchers among us. Linda Mayes made a plea for increased funding and emphasis on scientific activities within our Association. She also shared a broad perspective that seemed realistic in our efforts to rebuild bridges with the academic community. Our Association needs to reclaim its position as the preeminent scientific home for psychoanalysis. Mayes further advocated for “grassroots efforts” and developing a “conduit” for young scholars. The Affiliate Council can serve as that conduit. Our ongoing support for the annual scientific paper prize is a beginning, but we need to promote a scientific initiative that provides candidates with programs that help them to develop their ideas, to learn about research opportunities, and that facilitate a close liaison with psychoanalytic researchers.
I know I have not mentioned “reorganization” or “expanded membership criteria” in the last few paragraphs. That is not to say that these issues are not important to the health and long-term survival of our Association. However, I hope you will share in my excitement and mission for the Affiliate Council, which serves not only as a voice for candidates but also represents the future of our profession and our Association. Invest wisely!
Julio G. Calderon, M.D., is the incoming president of the Affiliate Council and is also an advanced candidate in the adult psychoanalytic program at the Florida Psychoanalytic Institute and a candidate in child psychoanalysis at the Baltimore Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis.