At the June Meeting in Washington D.C. the Board on Professional Standards took two important actions which may significantly impact the certification of psychoanalysts, one of BOPS's key functions as delineated in the APsaA bylaws. The first action was to adopt the newly revised Standards for Education and Training in Psychoanalysis, which creates the opportunity for analysts in institutes which have adopted the developmental pathway of education to simultaneously apply for certification and TA/SA appointment. The second action was to approve a pilot project proposed by Harvey Schwartz and Paul Holinger of the Certification Examination Committee (CEC) which will allow candidates from participating institutes to begin the certification examination process prior to graduation. These two initiatives, in conjunction with our current more traditional path to certification in psychoanalysis, has afforded us a unique opportunity to study the certification process from three distinctly different phases in analytic careers: pre-graduation, mid-career, and at a presumably more seasoned stage of analytic practice.
It is not our ultimate objective to develop multiple pathways to certification in psychoanalysis, but rather to take advantage of the unusual circumstances in which we find ourselves during this time of change and transition. Over the next three years, BOPS hopes to study the certification process—both the outcome as well as the experience of the process—so that we can make informed recommendations to the future BOPS leadership about what seems to be the most reliable, meaningful, and professional method of examining psychoanalytic competence, based on real data. We have asked our co-science advisors to BOPS, Wilma Bucci and Leon Hoffman, to seize this sublime research opportunity, and to extend and deepen the work started several years ago by Paul Holinger and the late Stuart Hauser. Based on their work, it appears to be a sound working hypothesis that analytic competence does have some core and identifiable features which are independent of an analyst's theoretical bent.
Details of the CEC's pilot project are discussed at length elsewhere in this issue of TAP [See “Certification Is Evolving,” page 20]. Similarly, elaboration on the process of the developmental pathway to certification and TA/SA appointment will be provided as soon as the details of this new initiative has been refined and operationalized. However, it is important to note that these are just two of several research opportunities which have been ushered in along with the new Standards for Education and Training in Psychoanalysis. Two others, which are in a very early planning stage, involve the development of assessment instruments which may be useful to institutes in their evaluation of candidate progression and readiness for graduation.
…it appears to be a sound working hypothesis that analytic competence does have some core and identifiable features which are independent of an analyst's theoretical bent.
The first of these is directly related to the emphasis on candidate colloquia in the new standards. This scholarly practice, which has long been a staple in the Chicago Institute, has been enthusiastically embraced in the new standards, providing BOPS with two uniform points of entry to study both clinical and theoretical competence during candidacy. Institutes which adopt a developmental philosophy of education are required to incorporate a candidate colloquium during the third year of candidacy and a second colloquium, prior to graduation. This structure offers two natural opportunities to study the development of psychoanalytic competence during training. Even institutes that have chosen the more traditional educational model are encouraged, though not required, to incorporate a pre-graduation colloquium and can participate in this study by providing information about their own method of evaluating candidate competence and readiness for graduation.
Wilma Bucci and Leon Hoffman, co-chairs of the Committee on Research Education (CORE), will spearhead a comprehensive study of psychoanalytic learning during candidacy, focusing on the candidate's learning trajectory from the beginning of psychoanalytic training to pre-graduation. They will collaborate with Holinger, the chair of the Certification and Research Development Committee (CARD), to identify what level of competence we hope candidates will have achieved at different points in their analytic training and in what areas. It is our ultimate goal to identify some educational benchmarks for candidates, which will allow them feedback about the areas of analytic practice they may be the strongest in, as well as those in which they may need special attention. We also anticipate that an assessment instrument measuring those benchmarks could be useful to Education and Progression Committees, as they make crucial decisions about their candidates.
Colleen L. Carney, Ph.D., is chair of the Board on Professional Standards, and Lee I. Ascherman, M.D., is secretary.
The second opportunity for study provided by the new standards is in the area of supervision. The supervision of candidates' control cases is one of the most important aspects of their training. In the new standards, there is increased emphasis on the qualifications of the supervising analyst, underscoring the teaching role of the supervisor and the critical opportunity for integrative learning within the supervisory relationship. This emphasis also offers BOPS a unique opportunity to systematically study the supervisory process and to develop a supervisory assessment instrument/s which can provide us with some systematically obtained data about the nature and effectiveness of supervision as it is conducted throughout our 31 APsaA institutes. In this initiative our co-chairs of CORE will collaborate with members of the Committee on Psychoanalytic Education (COPE) to study psychoanalytic competence from the perspective of the supervisor, as well as supervisory competence from the perspective of the supervisee.
The changes in our new Standards for Education and Training in Psychoanalysis are grounded in a shared commitment to providing excellent psychoanalytic education. The new standards also reflect a healthy curiosity about the complex nature of the learning process that goes into the making of a psychoanalyst.