Our Association is in a state of flux. The Task Force on Reorganization (TFOR) will soon present a plan with new bylaws for the structure of our governance. The Membership Requirements and Review Committee (MRRC) is proposing bylaw changes in regard to membership eligibility. The Task Force on Expanded Membership Criteria (TFEMC) continues to explore different models of membership. Institute leaders are deliberating about the future regulation of our institutes, and the Project for Innovation in Psychoanalytic Education (PIPE) is reconsidering our training analyst system and other aspects of our educational system.
It is an exciting time, a time of great promise, a time of real possibility. As members, we will soon be asked to vote on fundamental issues that will define our Association for decades. In order to fulfill our responsibility as members of a national psychoanalytic organization, we need to think deeply about who we are, and who we want to be.
The American Psychoanalytic Association has a long and proud history. Founded in an era of reform for medical education in the early part of the 20th century, the Association assumed a medical psychoanalytic identity. High quality and thorough psychoanalytic education has been a central focus of the Association from its inception. The mid 20th century formation of the Board on Professional Standards (BOPS) embodied this commitment. The last quarter of the 20th century saw fundamental changes in our organizational identity. Other mental health professionals, from the fields of psychology and social work, became eligible for training in the Association's institutes as the result of a settlement of a lawsuit intended to open our training programs to them. Established academics and others prominent in fields outside of mental health (such as law) also have a route to full clinical psychoanalytic training through the Association's Committee on Research and Special Training (CORST).
Thus we are no longer an exclusively medical psychoanalytic organization. We are an association of mental health professionals by degree or by training, or by the equivalence to mental health professional training achieved by our CORST students and graduates. Our Association represents the profession of psychoanalysis in all of its varied forms. We are united by our identity as psychoanalysts, an identity forged in the crucible of our training experiences. Our diverse individual routes to training blend in the commonality of our psychoanalytic training experiences. If our training experiences lead us to our identity as psychoanalysts, the soul of the Association resides in our commitment to high quality psychoanalytic education. This fact was borne out in the ranking of organizational priorities in our recent Strategic Planning Survey. Psychoanalytic education is, collectively, our number one priority.
In order to fulfill our responsibility as members of a national psychoanalytic organization, we need to think deeply about who we are, and who we want to be.
Under New York State law, where we are incorporated, we are a not-for-profit membership organization. As a membership organization, the rights of members are of central importance, and it seems inherently fair for all members to have the same rights and privileges. We also have major educational responsibilities. As a result, those entrusted with the educational responsibilities of the Association, those treating and supervising our psychoanalytic students and those serving as fellows and on committees of BOPS have to meet additional criteria for service. Our current structure expresses the seriousness with which we take our educational responsibilities.
The system has been and is under close scrutiny. It distinguishes between members with requisite educational credentials and others who have not obtained these credentials. This may be regarded as unfair by some of our members who are committed to the ideal of a membership organization in which all members have the same rights and privileges. Is there a way to structure a fair and equitable educational system committed to excellence within our larger membership organization's corporate structure? This is a question to ponder as we begin to make choices about our future.
Any member should be eligible to achieve the requisite credentials to serve in educational capacities. Yet if our educational credentials are to be meaningful, eligibility cannot guarantee achievement. This results in an inherent tension in our Association. How we deal with this tension will determine the future character of the Association. We are presently engaged in a struggle over the essence, the soul, of the Association. On one side is egalitarianism as an absolute ideal; on the other is merited achievement as an overriding organizational principle. This struggle is reflected in ideas about the reorganization of the Association, our membership processes and eligibility criteria, the future regulation of our component institutes, and our training analyst system.
If we can resolve this tension in some way, shape, or form, we should be able to move ahead as a psychoanalytic organization committed to excellence in education, research, and practice. If we can find a way to balance the needs of our members with the integrity of our educational system, we will be poised to continue as a voice and a beacon for psychoanalysis in the 21st century and beyond.
Eric J. Nuetzel, M.D., is chair of the Board on Professional Standards.
At present, we are far more than a membership organization. We are a membership organization of professional psychoanalysts with an educational mandate. We are thus also a professional organization committed to helping educate the next generation of psychoanalysts for the public good. As a membership organization, we must regard being responsive to the needs and desires of our members as an important value. As a professional organization, safeguarding the public interest must be our primary concern. To me, this is what is at stake in all of the changes we are contemplating: Do we exist to serve ourselves? Or do we exist to serve the public? Our Association has always functioned as a professional organization, committed to serving the public. Our Association may have been slow to adopt needed change as time and circumstances have changed, but if so, it is because we have been guided by the ideal of working in the public interest as we have moved thoughtfully and carefully forward. My deep wish is that we will continue to be guided by that ideal. If not, we will have lost our soul.