For nearly three decades I have had an academic appointment with the Department of Psychiatry at Harbor/UCLA Medical Center. One of my activities is to conduct a psychotherapy observation for the second-year residents. As I recently sat listening to my patient, with the residents behind the oneway mirror, she dropped a “bombshell” revealing an intensely embarrassing, personally held secret. This proved to be an aphrodisiac for the residents and during our discussion period following the therapy session I was peppered with questions. The residents were much impressed by what had occurred. In fact they need not have been. The residents had merely seen the natural unfolding of a well conducted psychoanalytic psychotherapy which had provided the patient with the necessary conditions of safety in which she could comfortably relax, acknowledge her apprehensions, and deal with them in a calm, reflective fashion free from excessive anxiety.
We need to assure that we don't have a lost decade of APsaA membership and a corresponding lost decade of infusion of ideas into APsaA.
There is an important parallel here. Leadership at any and all levels needs to establish exactly the same kind of conditions of safety for their constituents so that they can reflectively examine and confront without undue anxiety whatever problems are entangling them. A few mornings ago during my obligatory 20-minute duet with my treadmill, I was listening to NPR's “Marketplace Morning Report” as a commentator lugubriously opined that our population is looking to the Federal Reserve to buy Treasury notes as part of the program christened “Quantitative Easing” and by so doing the Fed was assuming national leadership in stimulating the monetary system.
These are precisely the functions of leadership APsaA must provide for our constituents in order to develop the same kind of secure and safe environment for our membership so that all of us can consider in a calm reflective manner, just as my therapy patient can, what our problems are and how we can deal with them.
I will mention just one of these problems. Or more accurately I will discuss a metric, our declining membership numbers, which allows us to consider a more fundamental issue and that is the question of whether or not our profession is in decline. There is, of course, an important distinction between a drop in our organizational membership and a decline in our profession. The figures are sobering. In the five-and-a-half-year time period from January 2005 through June 2010, our active membership has dropped from 1758 to 1558. This represents a decrement of more than 11 percent. This is, of course, a significant number and we need a sober, calm environment in which to reflectively consider this. And this is exactly one of the major reasons why I'm forming a Task Force to Develop a Strategic Plan.
We also need to do something in APsaA that we rarely have done as an organization and that is to develop a longer term organizational plan, one which lasts beyond the term of this or any single APsaA president. Indeed it will take several APsaA presidents to effectively formulate and understand the nature of this and other problems and then to enact the programs necessary to combat them. A beginning can be made now but the solutions will have to be enacted over a longer term.
On the national economic level, we hear a great deal of talk about “a lost decade” for the investment portfolios of individuals. We need to assure that we don't have a lost decade of APsaA membership and a corresponding lost decade of infusion of ideas into APsaA. It is a long cherished economic principle that larger populations generate more ideas and therefore greater life and vitality for a nation. The same I think can be applied to an organization.
In my last TAP note to you, I invoked Churchill's wartime rhetoric. Today I will invoke his counterpart, also a great leader, namely Franklin D. Roosevelt. I am going to refer to his historic First Inaugural Address delivered at a time of unprecedented national economic crisis. It was a bold and daring speech in which he outlined the need for strong leadership, vision, and action. I won't be so naïve as to suggest that all we have to fear is fear itself, but with the ability to calmly consider our problems without undo anxiety or fear, we can indeed do a better job of developing solutions. FDR exhorted us, “Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.” He also warned us, “When there is no vision, the people perish.” We too need vision. Roosevelt was also acutely aware that more than calm reflection and formulation were needed. As he stated, “There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped by merely talking about it.
Warren R. Procci, M.D., is president of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
We must act and act quickly.” Obviously I too believe that we need to act. Hopefully our strategic plan will provide us with an organizational blueprint that will enable us to have vision and undertake action.
In addition, I think we as individual analysts must adapt to changing conditions. In a future column, I will discuss some of my ideas concerning the ways that we as individual practitioners can utilize our skills in arenas other than the traditional consulting room to benefit many perspective clients/patients and ourselves as well.
As always, I invite each and every one of you to contact me with your own ideas.