As of July 1, 2010, we began the complex task of implementing our newly adopted Standards for Education and Training in Psychoanalysis. This document is the most comprehensive revision of our training standards since 1938. Born out of decades of intense internal conflict, it now represents the collective synthetic work of countless individuals, committees, and administrations. Those of us who had the privilege of hearing Vamik Volkan's plenary address at the recent APsaA Meeting, will recall that there truly is an art to conflict resolution. If we may loosely paraphrase his key points: Learn to talk to one another, do not force artificial agreements, and learn to live with and respect differences. This new document stands as a hopeful symbol of such healthy conflict resolution; but at the moment it is only a symbol, something like a sketch, or a promissory note. It is up to us, individually and together, to grow into it and make it real.
It would be misleading, however, to characterize these changes as merely a resolution of our conflicts, as important as that may be. The real intent of the Revisions Task Force was to shift the focus of our attention to the quality of education and training in our institutes. The new document is an intelligent balance between reckless non-regulation and stifling over control, between individual creativity and responsible oversight. It firmly anchors all of our institutes in the history we share, the tripartite training model. But this document also recaptures a part of our history that had been lost, the importance of research in our training programs and to our profession. The original Eitington-Freud model in Berlin was built on the triad of teaching, treatment, and research. These new standards reach back and pick up that loop which was dropped sometime during the 1940s. One might wonder, if this original emphasis on research had not been lost, would we now carry a different internal image of our training model, one that looks more like a chair than a three-legged stool: personal analysis, didactic teaching, supervised clinical work, and a research orientation to all that we do?
In this regard, the focus adopted in these new Standards for Education and Training in Psychoanalysis represents a historic milestone. The process of implementing these new standards is complex and will be coordinated through a number of ad hoc advisory committees and sub-committees.
First, a BOPS Planning Committee will be asked to develop a strategic plan, to identify long and short-term goals, and recommend manageable ways to measure them. Our hope is that the Planning Committee will give us a road map for reaching our ultimate objectives: more and better educated candidates, methods for collecting meaningful data, and the means to organize the knowledge needed to arm ourselves and our future analysts with a stronger voice in the larger mental health and scientific communities.
Second, an advisory sub-committee of the Committee on Institutes will develop a policy and procedure for processing waivers from institutes which choose to apply for a waiver of a training analysis for a candidate who is already in an established personal analysis.
Third, an advisory sub-committee of the Certification Examination Committee will develop a procedure to operationalize the developmental pathway to certification and training analyst appointments for those institutes choosing to adopt the developmental pathway. Similarly, there will be an advisory sub-committee to the Committee on New Training Facilities and the Committee on Research and Special Training, which will address the specific tasks of these committees in this time of transition.
Finally, with the help of the National Office, we will have a system for internal communication in place to facilitate dialogue between and among institutes as we implement these new standards, step by step.
All institutes are encouraged to incorporate pre-graduation colloquia into their curricula and progressions process. Institutes choosing the developmental pathway are required to incorporate two colloquia, one to be conducted after the candidate's third year of training, or prior to taking a third control case, and a second, pre-graduation colloquium. We believe that this scholarly practice will elevate the quality of psychoanalytic education throughout all of our 31 institutes. In addition, this revision offers two other important opportunities: to facilitate collaboration between and among institutes, and to provide a uniform point of evaluation which will allow us, over time, to establish some educational benchmarks for our candidates. We anticipate that most institutes will need particular assistance in incorporating colloquia into their training programs. Information and guidance about how to develop these colloquia will be provided on the BOPS section of the APsaA Web site. We also plan to offer BOPS workshops pertaining to colloquia and the developmental pathway of education at the national meetings.
As difficult as the mechanics of implementing these changes will be, our greater challenge will be effecting a fundamental shift in the way we think about psychoanalytic education and the role that BOPS can play in helping each institute develop its unique features. The spirit of these revised standards is two-fold: to preserve our national commitment to a shared philosophy of psychoanalytic education and professional standards, while encouraging the creativity and unique culture of each institute. BOPS and APsaA institutes have entered a new era of psychoanalytic education. Success depends upon all of us.
Colleen L. Carney, Ph.D., is the chair of BOPS; Lee Ascherman, M.D., serves as secretary.