In a few weeks, I'll be finishing up my term as president of APsaA, and, in fact, concluding a decade-long period of my life singularly devoted to and preoccupied with our strange and wonderful organization: first as chair of the Fellowship Committee, then editor of TAP, secretary, president-elect, and finally president. I want to thank you, the members of APsaA, for giving me this extraordinary opportunity to do what I've learned I love best—break through impasses, find solutions for problems, and discover new ways to pursue our goals.
There are so many people I want to thank that I could go on for pages, but I am going to limit myself to two individuals and one group.
Dean Stein, APsaA's executive director, makes our organization run. His professional skills have brought APsaA to a new level of effectiveness and professionalism that is the bedrock of our significant successes. He is adept at taking a scrambled idea, question, or blurry vision and turning it into a logical series of actions that organizes the group involved. This down-to-earth approach led to the accomplishment of a great many things that would otherwise have foundered on the shoals of undirected thinking. To the extent that I was able to accomplish anything as president, much is owed to Dean.
I want to thank you, the members of APsaA, for giving me this extraordinary opportunity to do what I've learned I love best—break through impasses, find solutions for problems, and discover new ways to pursue our goals.
The capacity of my husband Jacques Gourguechon to put up with the hours and hours I spent on organizational work astounds me, and he is the greatest container of distressing affect. In the process of watching me at work in the Association, I think he fell in love with psychoanalysis, though it is not his field, and that made me proud.
The one group I must single out for special thanks is the National Office staff. Most of you don't know them as individuals but they are an amazing bunch, and nothing I've done from the Fellowship Committee onward could have happened without them. So thank you: Chris Broughton, Brian Canty, Sherkima Edwards, Tina Faison, Diana Franklin, Carolyn Gatto, James Guimaraes, Jake Lynn, Johannes Neuer, Nerissa Steele, Debbie Steinke Wardell, and Niki Turner.
I would like to end my opportunity to use this “bully pulpit” to convey with some urgency a few wishes or recommendations or pleas that I have for the organization. These thoughts are based on what I hope is some wisdom I have attained about this organization after all these years immersed in its problems and potentials.
APsaA must continue to pursue outreach, public information, and advocacy efforts, both nationally and locally, as vigorously as possible. Pushing psychoanalysis back into the realm of public discourse, education, the media, and culture is vital to our survival, and our voice within those realms enriches and deepens human understanding.
We need to strengthen the connections between the national organization and its affiliated societies and institutes, and vice versa. The connections I am talking about are affiliative and communicative, not merely structural.
We must not miss the opportunity to expand membership in meaningful ways. Remaining an alumni organization is neither smart nor viable in the long run. Approving the Expanded Pathway to Membership Bylaw currently awaiting your vote is a first step.
With the greatest respect for our Executive Council, and with awareness that in some quarters this is a very unpopular notion, I strongly urge the organization, before too long, to regroup, depoliticize the issue, and change the structure of our board of directors. We could function much better and accomplish much more with a small, streamlined, modern board of directors—about 15 members, all elected by the membership at large, with room for a couple of experts from outside of psychoanalysis. A board of directors constructed by society representatives simply does not make sense and is too large and fluid to work well. My recommendation is that our current board of directors constitute a commission to propose two new structures—a modern, streamlined, democratically elected board, and a council of societies that would bridge the gap between members and the organization.
The recent dramatic events in BOPS, which have led to a proposed revision of our standards for education and training, might well end decades of paralyzing conflict centered around certification and the TA system. I cannot overstate the importance of this revision of our standards. Without it, it is quite likely that the Association would have split. These changes, if approved, have dramatic implications and require widespread involvement, education, and cooperation.
I have always been interested in how career paths develop. The 10,000 Minds Initiative I started a few years ago began with the observation that many analysts say their interest in our field began with a teacher, class, or book they encountered as undergraduate students. Part of my motivation for organizing the Soldiers and Veterans Initiative came from my experience of helplessness as an 18-year-old college freshman observing the haunted eyes of Vietnam veterans.
Prudence L. Gourguechon, M.D., is president of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
My own career in this organization began when I was a candidate, and I wrote Marvin Margolis that I was interested in a committee he had mentioned in one of his president's columns. Since then, I have made countless friends and colleagues around the country and the world, been tested in crises I never could have imagined, developed skills I was sure were beyond my capability. So I will close with an invitation—to Affiliate members especially but also to older members—become involved in this organization. Look for a committee or two that interest you and contact the chair, the president, or the president-elect about the possibility of your being appointed. Get to know people, run for office. Instead of thinking “somebody should do this,” just go ahead and volunteer to do it. The rewards are tremendous.
Thanks and good-bye.