We are almost through another political season. Having been immersed in politics for the last decade, I know the processes intimately and feel proud to be involved. However, if some feel turned off because politics is less to their taste, I would just ask them not to drop out. At the end of the season, we need to come together to deal with the psychoanalytic environment's unfavorable climate report.
We take that climate report seriously and are doing a lot to move psychoanalysis forward. In the advocacy priority, we have the Oxford agreement putting ethics into business operations; the RICO settlements making managed care answer for predatory practices; the proposed Ethics Based Medicine Act of 2005, defending privacy in the tradition of Hippocrates and asking Congress to join with us; and the HIPAA suit in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit raising constitutional issues about medical privacy.
In the education priority, we have the Ticho Memorial Lecture, the first foundation supported lecture in the Association's history; planning for a 21st century scientific program; the exploration of “no-strings” pharmaceutical support for our scientific program; and the BOPS efforts to further improve the reliability and validity of certification in the service of continuing education and career development.
As important as these efforts are, we have much more to do. For example, we have an excellent national lobbying campaign, but we need a state effort. As developments in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont demonstrate, the very definition of psychoanalysis is dependent on state coalitions, lobbying, and political action. We have had our successes—Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and California—and we are getting smarter, but we are not out of the woods. We are working at outreach, but we are always at a disadvantage because of a pervasive belief, even among those who should know better, that psychoanalysis is passé and inconsequential, if not frankly dead. We have yet to mount a national advertising campaign that says otherwise. There is consensus about the importance of using media outlets to say we are alive and well, but we don't have the fundraising, public relations, and business resources to mount a successful campaign.
Our situation can be summarized in three simple facts.
Fact 1: Our challenges expand like ripples from the common belief that psychoanalysis is dead.
Fact 2: To be effective, we must be smart in choosing actions and interventions.
Fact 3: Effectiveness is dependent upon having necessary skills and resources at our fingertips.
If we think of our Association as a family, then it is time to welcome new, experienced, and talented members to the family.
I don't think there is any doubt about those facts: Our challenges are vast, we have to be smart to meet them, and, to be smart, we need more specialized help. This is where the rubber meets the road and our two strategic initiatives come together. Stated simply and directly, being smart is strategic planning; getting more of the right kind of help is reorganization. Strategic planning has developed our priorities and brought us face to face with long-range planning, tough choices, and the critical need for help. To get that help, we need to reorganize, and not just in a token manner. As I have said before, the changes we need have a lot more to do with organizational effectiveness than with not-for-profit corporation law. At the heart of those facilitative changes are the board of directors' functions. In modern corporate structure, the board of directors gives you the needed financial, fundraising, public relations, lobbying, legal, and business skills. If we think of our Association as a family, then it is time to welcome new, experienced, and talented members to the family.
We can be proud that our current governance has gotten us to this critical juncture, but our present governance only made sense when we were smaller and internally preoccupied, with no competition or challenges—scarcely the current circumstance. Now, our board of directors is the Executive Council with 58 councilors, largely chosen by and representing societies. I have been part of that body since 1993 and it has been my home within a home. I have grown up in the Council, recognize that it has carried us a long way, and speak of it with pride and respect. It is an institution that has laurels to rest on, not the least of which is that it had the wisdom to begin a reorganization process. I believe the Council, along with our members, will have the wisdom to see it through.
There will be many debates and different views, but I don't think we can get around what might be called “fact number four”: Our difficult environment requires a smaller, streamlined, and yet democratic board of directors, elected directly by the members and responsible to the membership, with minority seats for essential extra-analytic talents and experience. To put it from a slightly different perspective, we need a board of directors that can raise money as well as oversee its expenditure.
Jon Meyer, M.D., is president of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
These ideas move us away from the usual and familiar, but if we are to thrive and not just survive, we must think outside the box. We have come a long way but we can't go the rest of the way without help from outside of psychoanalysis.
All this is not easy for anyone. In fact, the Council is asked to have extraordinary wisdom and take the difficult step of considering its own future, looking beyond itself to the years ahead. I believe the Council is up to the task. As members, we have the final vote and believe we are up to the task.
We all need to discuss and understand the implications of a thorough reorganization. In New York, there will be time set aside for you to meet with the Executive Committee, the Steering Committee, and me so we can talk about these far-reaching changes. We have a lot of discussion ahead of us and I look forward to seeing you.