At the June 2010 Meeting in Washington D.C. the Board on Professional Standards approved a pilot project allowing candidates the opportunity to begin their certification evaluation during their training years. For candidates electing to participate in this pilot, certification occurs in two parts: Part I, pre-graduation, when a candidate has two cases in the middle-phase of analysis and Part II, post-graduation, when the applicant has conducted an analysis through termination.
This new certification option is designed to dovetail the certification process with the time of a candidate's formal education and training. We have been in the process of formulating this new opportunity for a number of years with consultation with many psychoanalytic educators and are delighted to be able to bring it to fruition. This new program requires the approval of an institute in order for its candidates to participate. We have been quite gratified by the enthusiasm with which so many of our institutes have welcomed this new program and are encouraging their candidates to participate.
We have been quite gratified by the enthusiasm with which so many of our institutes have welcomed this new program and are encouraging their candidates to participate.
June 2010 CEC Members
In Part I of this new certification process the candidate is asked to write about two mid-phase cases according to the guidelines on the APsaA Certification Web page. Once submitted, these cases are reviewed by the entire Certification Examination Committee (CEC) who are totally blind to the applicant's identity, age, institute, and professional background. If a pass is recommended then Part I of certification is complete.
For Part II of this new certification process, the applicant is asked to present process notes on a terminated case to two CEC members in an interview format who will then report back to the entire certification committee. Details about this new program are available on the APsaA Certification Web page in the Members section of the Web site.
We are excited about this new approach to certification. More importantly, the candidates we've spoken with are also excited about it. We repeatedly hear that candidates who have two patients in the middle-phase of their analysis have been frustrated by having to wait until their patients terminate in order to apply for certification. This new option will allow these candidates to begin the process far before termination occurs.
We hope this process not only eases our candidates' involvement with national and blinded perspectives on their psychoanalytic work, but also allows us to begin studying the certification process to identify what works well in our educational programs and what needs more attention. With the permission of the institutes of participating candidates we are planning to study the results of these evaluations and provide anonymous feedback to those institutes who desire it. This part of the pilot program will be jointly headed by Paul Holinger, chair of the Certification Assessment and Research Development Committee (CARD), and
Harvey Schwartz, M.D., is the chair of the CEC and is a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia where he is also the chair of the Admissions Committee. Schwartz is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University.
Wilma Bucci and Leon Hoffman, who serve as co-chairs of the Committee on Research Education (CORE) and the science advisors to BOPS.
This pilot project is new. We on the CEC recognize that it will involve a learning curve for all of us. We welcome input from candidates and faculty as we refine this effort to deepen our educational and evaluative programs.
Editor's Note: A table of statistics and demographics related to the 2010 certification process can be found in the last issue of TAP, 44/3, page 35.