10,000 Minds Project: Learning from Our Undergraduates: Do You Know Wikopedia?

Attendees of the January 2006 APsaA meeting in New York may have noticed some fresh faces at the Waldorf-Astoria. The newly appointed Undergraduate Advisory Board (UAB) attended its first meeting with the Task Force on Undergraduate Education (TFUE) and got a taste of what APsaA is, and what it has to offer the 10,000 best minds of tomorrow. But it was the TFUE that received a valuable education on how psychoanalysis is taught, which areas of academia are teaching it, and how it is perceived in many undergraduate institutions throughout the United States.

The TFUE has initiated a number of projects aimed at increasing the exposure of undergraduates to the very basic concepts of psychoanalysis as theory and treatment. We are studying the psychoanalytic content in introductory psychology courses and texts, establishing a Web site to provide teachers with resources for including psychoanalytic content in their undergraduate courses, developing a packet of activities for local societies and institutes that want to get involved with their local campuses, establishing liaisons with a variety of other associations with common interests, and more. One of our favorite projects concerns the recruitment and formation of an Undergraduate Advisory Board.

This advisory board will serve an important function in helping us gauge the level of interest in the theory, application, and practice of psychoanalysis, as well as helping us determine the most effective ways of reaching out to undergraduates and facilitating their interest in psychoanalysis.

In early January 2006, the TFUE posted an e-mail asking APsaA members to forward to colleagues teaching at the undergraduate level, or directly to undergraduate students with whom members may have contact, information about a proposed Undergraduate Advisory Board. In just a few days we received applications from 17 undergraduates representing 13 universities and colleges from four distinct regions of the U.S. Much to our surprise, a minority (six) of the applicants are relatives of APsaA members.

Remarkably, 13 UAB representatives traveled to the January 2006 meeting at their own expense, several, in spite of spring semester classes commencing the very same week. The UAB convened for a lunch meeting to become familiar with the objectives of the TFUE. UAB representatives shared information about personal and on-campus psychoanalysis, including classroom curricula, and experiences with student mental health services and private treatment settings. In many of the on-campus contexts, there was a good bit of dissatisfaction with access to psychoanalytic theory and treatment methodology in course work or readings.

One observation echoed by several UAB representatives was that when scholarly material pertaining to psychoanalysis is presented, it is typically historical in nature, without any mention of subsequent revisions or any sense of how psychoanalysis is practiced today. Teachers are frequently derisive and dismissive about psychoanalysis, especially in psychology courses.

It appears that most psychoanalytic curriculum is being taught in humanities departments, such as philosophy, literature, and language, and not departments of psychology and social science. And with rare exception, most psychoanalytic curriculum is taught by academics typically not trained in psychoanalysis.

The UAB comprises intelligent, creative, passionate undergraduate students who have demonstrated an interest in psychoanalysis and human psychology. They made several suggestions to the TFUE as to how to best reach academics and undergraduate students, and helped crystallize the thinking on what the TFUE will do next, such as to develop an electronic forum on which the UAB will evaluate TFUE initiatives and to continue the discussions begun in January. They told us what not to do (offer online courses) and what to do: provide for-credit summer courses, make local society meetings accessible to students on local campuses (advertising via the Internet). The students are extremely eager for summer internships in areas such as psychoanalytic publication or research. (Any member interested in providing such an internship should contact Prudy Gourguechon.) They told us, in no uncertain terms, that analysts must become involved in refining the articles on psychoanalysis in the anarchic online encyclopedia called Wikopedia (). None of us analysts had even heard of it, though our UAB taught us it was THE most important way to reach young people.

Before our task force meeting closed, we were talking together about psychoanalytic careers, when the students turned the table on us and asked the analysts in the room how their careers had developed. The analysts were dumbstruck at first, and then rather shyly shared their stories. The UAB will reconvene at the June 2006 Meeting in Washington, D.C.