“Who is responsible for our institutes' educational policies and structure?” is a question that has been raised on the Members' List. When it comes to the education of candidates in our institutes, the bylaws of our Association, Article XII Section 2b, clearly delegate this responsibility to the Board on Professional Standards (BOPS). In so doing, the standards for the psychoanalytic training of our candidates are delineated by the collective wisdom of all APsaA institutes. Most recently, a few institutes have perhaps inadvertently either implemented or considered training standards which are out of compliance with our consensually agreed upon national standards.
We would like to take this opportunity to clarify these standards as they apply to the American Psychoanalytic Association's training analyst system, and also to delineate important measures we have undertaken to respond to both the pressing needs of some of our institutes, as well as the presence of divergent views that lie within that collective wisdom referred to above.
The Principles and Standards for Education in Psychoanalysis states: “Accredited institutes are also responsible for insuring that the personal psychoanalysis and the supervision of psychoanalytic work of all candidates are consistent with the training analyst system of this Association.” (page 5 of the standards document).
Similarly, there has been a misunderstanding and possibly a distortion of the sentence: “The candidate must be in analysis with a training analyst for a substantial period of time that overlaps the supervised casework.” This sentence was written specifically for the situation in which candidates had completed their analysis with a training analyst before beginning their supervised analyses. When this occurred, the training analysis had to resume for a substantial period of time that overlapped the supervised casework. “The substantial period of time” phrase was not intended to apply to switching from a non-training analyst to a training analyst. In fact, both IPA and ACPE also require an analysis with a designated training analyst.
Infrequently, while maintaining support of the training analyst system, an institute would admit a candidate who was in analysis with a non-training analyst. However, the understanding was made clear that this person would need to begin analysis with a training analyst before either starting classes or beginning supervised clinical work.
We believe that nationally agreed upon training standards are essential to the education of our candidates and the strength of our profession.
More recently, the “substantial period of time” clause has been used to redefine the training analyst system. Candidates have been admitted with the explicit understanding that their primary analytic experience may be with a non-training analyst. A brief period of analysis with a TA could then be required.
This change in policy by a few institutes is out of compliance with current APsaA standards.
Some institutes have also considered a policy of training candidates with non-training analysts with the understanding that the candidate would not join APsaA or IPA upon graduation. This too, in our opinion, is a violation of the training analyst system, and would place an institute out of compliance with our current training standards.
What should institutes do, and what can BOPS do to respond to the divergence in views on particular standards within the institute cohort? The old adage was always that institutes should work through BOPS and its appropriate committees to convince a simple majority of the institutes that the desired change was educationally sound. In this way, our educational standards would always represent the majority wishes of the institutes that had agreed to follow them.
At our administrative meetings in Chicago, BOPS adopted two other proposals to respond to those institutes wishing for significant changes in our standards. Eric Nuetzel, immediate past chair of BOPS, proposed and will chair a summit meeting that will take place on the weekend of January 9-10, preceding our national meeting in New York.
Nuetzel's proposal came out of the active BOPS discussion of the two-track model previously put forth by Lynne Moritz and Prudy Gourguechon. Under Nuetzel's proposal, two committees were formed after the Chicago meeting. One committee is attempting to slightly revise our current standards. The second committee is developing the standards for a second training model or track. Nuetzel will oversee the workings of each committee between now and January, when the two committees will come together at the proposed summit. At that time, they will hopefully come up with a workable solution for either a single revised set of acceptable national standards, or a second set of training standards that one-third or more of our institutes will choose to adopt.
Myrna Weiss, M.D., and Cal Narcisi, M.D., are co-chairs of the Board on Professional Standards.
There are several important features to this plan. First, if we move to a two-track system, it maintains national educational standards if a significant percentage of our institutes agree to it and support it. Second, it encourages each institute to have in-depth discussions about which track it will adopt, since each institute must commit to one of the tracks in its entirety. We believe that nationally agreed upon training standards are essential to the education of our candidates and the strength of our profession. If they are not firmly in place, changing local exigencies will undoubtedly precipitate abrupt and impulsive changes to fulfill certain needs.
The educational rationale for these impulsive decisions might then be made post hoc. Shared national standards protect us all from these changing local pressures and, further, allow for collective wisdom of a group of institutes to create what must inevitably be a better product.
Finally, to enlist the support and input from all of our institutes, we plan to create three new study groups with faculty representatives from each institute. These study groups will study issues relating to curriculum, admissions, and recruitment.
We hope that this clarifies any confusion about our current training standards as they pertain to the training analyst system and highlights some of BOPS's attempts to be responsive to the concerns of all of our institutes.