When my children were in grade school, they were taught to write essays by a method that spooked me. They had to write an introductory paragraph listing three points they were going to make, then write three paragraphs, one on each point, and a concluding paragraph saying what they had said. This technique was stunning in its lack of creativity, but somehow comforting in its rigid structure. I secretly envied the structure and certainty. How calming to know exactly where you were in an argument or a process. And perhaps this pedagogic method did not really teach writing, but it certainly reinforced accountability.
For this presidential column, I decided to adopt some of that elementary structure and demand for accountability. It is now a year into my service as your president—halfway through my term. What did I say I was going to do? What did I do? How did I do at doing what I said I was going to do?
This exercise is as much for myself as it is for you. One of the frustrations of the APsaA presidency, acknowledged by many of my predecessors, is that you feel you are elected to accomplish certain goals. Goals associated with improving practice or the state of psychoanalysis in the United States. Goals, you hope, that would make analysts proud to be APsaA members. And then you quickly face a host of distractions in organizational preoccupations with governance and other intercurrent crises that lead to a diversion from one's goals. I believe our organization still spends far too much time dealing with governance, and conflicts over governance, when the only point of governance is to allow us to accomplish our mission of serving members and advancing the profession of psychoanalysis. In all we do organizationally, we should be continuously asking ourselves if the effort spent best serves the members, the profession, and the public.
Reviewing my original campaign platform and early TAP articles, I can list these original goals:
Focus on societal issues, especially veterans and their families
Form a comprehensive Education Department
Attend to outreach and membership needs
Support ongoing and new activities in advocacy, public information, and communications, as well as psychoanalytic science, psychoanalytic education, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy
Promote a personal analyst system
Bring to fruition an expanded membership pathway
I believe our organization still spends far too much time dealing with governance, and conflicts over governance, when the only point of governance is to allow us to accomplish our mission of serving members and advancing the profession of psychoanalysis. In all we do organizationally, we should be continuously asking ourselves if the effort spent best serves the members, the profession, and the public.
We have created a template for position statements to guide committees unfamiliar with this mode of action. Position statements are a key step in ensuring a psychoanalytic voice on a wide range of important social issues. A statement opposing corporal punishment of children is in the works. The Soldiers and Veterans Initiative (SVI) has accomplished quite a bit, with a strong section on our Web page, several position statements, a dedicated Internet discussion group, several press placements, and the moving article by Russell Carr, a candidate stationed in Iraq, in the last TAP, calling us all to service. A specially designed logo called attention to SVI activities and various speakers and sessions at the January 2009 Meeting, including the Presidential Symposium with Jonathan Shay. We are now identifying our focus for a next stage of activity.
This project has far exceeded my wildest hopes. The outreach Education Division is morphing into an Education Department, a common structure in successful nonprofits. With generous support from the Ticho Foundation, the highly energetic leadership of Steve Sonnenberg and with staff support from Debbie Wardell, this division now comprises nine committees, which cover outreach to educational systems from pre-K through post-graduate level. Each committee has articulated a mission and goals, and intercommittee collaboration is built into the division's functioning. You will see the results start to emerge dramatically over the year ahead.
We are currently analyzing the results of the Member Needs Survey that was distributed
Prudence L. Gourguechon, M.D., is president of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
online in March. The purpose of the survey was to find out the level of satisfaction with existing member benefits and what ideas members have for new benefits. The Practice Toolbox on APsaA's Web site is one member benefit that I think has tremendously useful information as well as great growth potential.
Outreach was the siren that originally called me into work in psychoanalytic organizations. I still remember hearing, about 15 years ago, about San Francisco's outreach program to local judges and New Haven's community policing project. I am concerned about the support for creative outreach in the organization.
Advocacy efforts continue to be strong, with our special expertise in privacy playing a pivotal role in the formulation of the privacy provisions of the electronic medical record portion of the Obama stimulus package.
The American Psychoanalytic Foundation supports outreach efforts, and APsaA's director of public affairs, Dottie Jeffries, conducts an excellent workshop at the meetings. But the Committee on Foundations, a major site for the dissemination of information on outreach projects, has disbanded. Also gone is Forward!, the newsletter that featured outreach efforts. Outreach is something that happens locally, but inspiration and communication about outreach projects has to be done nationally as well. It's a tricky thing to embed in our national organization and I plan to give it more of my attention in the year ahead.
The Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic Research Society has received seed money and is pursuing incorporation. The Roose/Columbia pilot study has been funded. Our science committees are extremely active and working in a strong collaborative way.
Public information and communications has been strong for a long time, but it also requires much ongoing maintenance and attention. The Executive Committee just approved an upgrade in the content management system of our Web site which will have numerous benefits including the ability to host blogs, a function that improves our standing in Internet searches. At the encouragement of the staff, I have started a president's blog as an experiment. We need to modernize the Find an Analyst feature on the Web site so that it includes pictures, maps, and personal Web site links. The Web site should be updated more regularly.
We are completing a communications plan that sorts out various possibilities and sets priorities among the burgeoning new media opportunities. A wise consultant has advised us to concentrate on our own Web site, and avoid the temptation to get involved in a great number of social media sites. A terrific new feature of the APsaA Web site is our new audio library—a very long time in anticipation and finally arrived.
Advocacy efforts continue to be strong, with our special expertise in privacy playing a pivotal role in the formulation of the privacy provisions of the electronic medical record portion of the Obama stimulus package. We can expect many more developments on the health-care front in the next year, and should be alert to their effects on our members.
Regarding the personal analyst system: No, I have not made that happen, nor can I alone. However, the discussion recently undertaken within BOPS of the two-track system that Lynne Moritz and I suggested last year does allow for the possibility that a group of institutes wishing to make slight or even radical changes in the training model could assemble and with great collaborative effort produce an alternative set of standards that would be different but no less excellent. I think this is the best available opportunity for change.
The issue of expanding membership to include those who have trained outside the institutes of the Association or IPA is now in the hands of the membership in the form of a proposed membership bylaw amendment that will make it possible, if it is approved, for individuals with equivalent training to apply for membership. I strongly support the bylaw amendment and encourage you to do so as well. I believe passage of this amendment will only benefit our profession and our Association, and will not hurt it in any way.
I will spell out the following goals for the remaining half of my presidency, in addition to not dropping the threads that have already been woven into something strong and interesting:
Examine our organizational stance towards supporting outreach efforts and propose needed structures to improve this support
Finish the communications plan and the updating of the infrastructure of our Web site, with consolidation of the audio library, blog (add a science blog), and an enhanced Find an Analyst feature
Identify a meaningful next focus for the Soldiers and Veterans Initiative and set up a structure to monitor the Obama health-care plan as it evolves
This deliberate gaze backward leaves me pleased with what's been accomplished. At the same time, I am left with a cautious feeling. Our organization is at once incredibly vibrant and able to accomplish a tremendous amount. We need to watch our tendency to get preoccupied with governance issues at the expense of programmatic focus. We must keep our attention always on what we the members need and want to have for successful professional lives, and what we need to do to advance our profession of psychoanalysis and realize its potential in contributing its unique insights to the larger world.