Moving Forward

As we prepare for our first meeting as co-chairs of BOPS, we have a number of central issues before us. As the educational arm of the Association, we take very seriously our charge to set and maintain standards for psychoanalytic training. To accomplish this task, we need members to work on our committees in an atmosphere of creativity and cooperation. We are pleased that many members have stepped forward to accept appointments to the BOPS committees and we look forward to their contributions. The spirit of the June Council meeting was very encouraging in its affirmation of BOPS's and Council's continued work together.

In considering the Rosenblitt proposal, renamed the Exploratory Proposal for Moving Forward, the Council supported the establishment of a joint committee to assess the advisability and feasibility of creating two separate corporations. We have worked closely with Lynne Moritz to form a committee which will study all aspects of this proposal to externalize BOPS. The committee has been asked to have a report ready in 10 months for general consideration. The co-chairs of this committee are Paul Mosher and Don Rosenblitt. During the preliminary discussion of these ideas, many questions were raised about the effect externalizing BOPS would have on the relationship between APsaA and IPA. That being the case, we have asked Charles Hanly, president-elect of IPA, to serve as an ad hoc consultant to this committee. We hope that the committee will be given the support of our organization.

Another element of moving forward is the plan to continue the Congress of Institutes on Tuesday afternoon in New York. At this meeting we hope to be able to get more information from the new Task Force on Externalization in order to facilitate a deeper discussion about this process. It is especially important to clarify the ways in which the two corporations could and would work together.

An equally important topic for this next congress is certification. In the last meeting the group strongly expressed its wish to have an open discussion on this topic. There are conflicting feelings about certification regarding its intrinsic value, the process itself, its implications for the educational programs at our institutes, and its link to TA/SA status. Using the Third Congress as a forum, BOPS hopes that we can have a thoughtful and open discussion about this process. We must be clear about the emerging research, the changes that have already been made, and those yet to be made, as well as the value of certification to our profession.

We are pleased that Paul Holinger is the new chair of the Certification Examination Committee (CEC). He has recommended the appointment of a number of new members and has invited new participant observers. He is deeply committed to improving the process so that applicants are treated fairly. He will work closely with Don Rosenblitt, chair of the Certification Advisory Research and Development Committee (CARD). With the help of Stuart Hauser and his Committee on Research Education (CORE), CARD will resume its study of the certification process by implementing phase three of the inter-rater reliability study. It is expected that this will conclude the study of reliability and permit CARD to begin the study of validity. The study of the interview process will proceed using audio recordings. We cannot forget that there was great support at the Second Congress for discussing the externalization of certification, an idea strongly backed by both the Ad Hoc Committee to Study Certification and CARD. This initiative deserves very serious discussion and consideration. In general, the process of certification remains under study, guided by the appropriate research techniques and by the confidential communications from the lawyers that APsaA hired to review the entire process.

We are pleased that many members have stepped forward to accept appointments to the BOPS committees and we look forward to their contributions.

We are also moving forward in the Committee on Child and Adolescent Analysis (COCAA). We are grateful to Phyllis Tyson for having chaired this committee for several years. Her experience as a child analyst and as a leader in our Association added to her value in this position. As of June of 2007, Ruth Karush agreed to assume the chair of COCAA. We appreciate her willingness to step in once again. This is an especially exciting time, since many of the ideas and programs that were begun during Karush's first tenure are now coming to fruition.

COCAA will begin the work of reconsidering and rewriting parts of the Principles and Standards for Training in Psychoanalysis that pertain to child training. They will focus on accommodating the training of candidates who apply only for child analytic training in institutes with approved child programs. The research report written by Jill Miller of Denver about child focused training was circulated in June and is an extraordinarily rich document that covers the work in the four pilot programs. Another issue that COCAA will consider is the place of a child case in the analytic training of non-child candidates. We look forward to these changes that will be coming from the evolving work of this committee.

We should not forget the efforts of our other BOPS committees who work to study and advance psychoanalysis. We are proud of the professionalism and integrity of our committees and hope that in a collective atmosphere of trust and cooperation there will be continued forward motion in BOPS.