In January 2005, I was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Accreditation Council for Psychoanalytic Education, Inc. (ACPEinc). When some of our members learned of my appointment, the most frequent comment was, “What's the ACPE?” I thought it might be useful to describe the organization.
The Accreditation Council for Psychoanalytic Education (ACPE) was incorporated in 2001. It was established as an independent accrediting agency by the Psychoanalytic Consortium, an informal organization of four major United States psychoanalytic membership organizations: The American Academy of Psychoanalysis, The American Psychoanalytic Association, Division 39 (Psychoanalysis) of the American Psychological Association, and the National Membership Committee on Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work (now the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work). Together, these organizations represent the majority of psychoanalysts in the U.S.A. Richard Fox was the APsaA identified incorporator of ACPEinc.
As early as 1994, the intention to develop an accrediting board for psychoanalytic training programs was agreed upon by the consortium organizations. The process of developing a set of standards that was acceptable to all parties took several years. Extensive discussions at consortium meetings and frequent checking with the parent organizations resulted in a mutually agreed upon core set of standards that allows for some variability in requirements for any particular training program, provided that such standards amplify and are not in conflict with the core standards of ACPEinc. These carefully negotiated standards were adopted by ACPEinc when it was spun off as an independent corporation.
The initial Board of Trustees of ACPEinc consisted of one representative from each of the four consortium organizations. They, in turn, elected a board of 14. There were three nominees from each of the four organizations and two public members. The next generation of members of the board of trustees was elected by the board itself. The original members who were identified with APsaA were nominated by the president and chairman of the Board on Professional Standards. They were Gerald Margolis, Alvin Robbins, and Allen Rosenblatt. Terms of office were of varying lengths so that the entire board would not change at one time. At the conclusion of Margolis's first term, he declined to continue his service. I was elected for a full three-year term to replace him. When Rosenblatt died, Phil Lebovitz was elected to complete his term. Robbins decided to leave the board after his term ended and David Turner replaced him. In addition, several other members of APsaA serve as trustees because they are also members of other psychoanalytic organizations. In the future, new members of the board and new officers will be elected by ACPEinc members. Each time a training program is accredited, it becomes a voting member of ACPEinc.
The officers of ACPEinc are Nathan Stockhammer, chair of the board; Sheila Hafter Gray, president; Penny Rosen, secretary; Phil Lebovitz, treasurer; and Joseph Palombo, financial secretary. I am vice-president for accreditation.
Bylaws for the new organization were adopted in 2003 as well as a detailed business plan. This was a precondition for financial support of the fledgling accreditation board by consortium organizations. So far, ACPEinc has been supported financially by the consortium members and grants from the Group for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Psychology. It is anticipated that ACPEinc will eventually be self-supporting from the fees paid by training programs that seek its accreditation. ACPEinc's policy is to conduct all accreditations and site visits at no charge to the applying training programs until ACPEinc receives recognition by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE). This was adopted in order to establish the reputation of the new accreditation credential. To date, ACPEinc has accredited five training programs and one more is in the final stages of accreditation. Three of these training programs are affiliated institutes of APsaA. ACPEinc encourages new applicants to take advantage of this period of free accreditation. ACPEinc also suggests that APsaA institutes consider applying when they are in the site visit process of the Committee on Institutes (COI) in order to avoid duplication of effort.
ACPEinc sees its mission as twofold: to protect the public by evaluating and accrediting psychoanalytic training programs in the United States and to promote excellence in psychoanalytic education. With this dual mission, it hopes to ensure that practitioners of psychoanalysis are educated to appropriate standards by the institutes in which they are trained. ACPEinc therefore mandates that psychoanalytic training programs require their students to participate in the three
Ronald M. Benson, M.D., is training and supervising analyst at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, chair of the BOPS Finance Committee, former chair of BOPS, and vice-president for accreditation, ACPE.
components that are nationally and internationally recognized as essential to psychoanalytic education: a comprehensive course of didactic study; a personal psychoanalysis of a frequency, intensity, and duration adequate to provide a deep psychoanalytic experience; and substantial experience treating patients with the supervision and support of senior faculty. It also encourages research by candidates and faculty.
ACPEinc believes, on the basis of its contacts with the DOE, that accreditation of psychoanalytic training programs recognized by a DOE-recognized accrediting agency is rapidly becoming necessary to ensure these programs are recognized as legitimate within the United States and to ensure the continuation of clinical psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic training programs as a legitimate professional endeavor. It is also the opinion of ACPEinc that accreditation by an independent organization is essential to recognition of psychoanalysis as a professional specialty by all organizations and grant awarding entities.
To date, ACPEinc has developed an application procedure, a self-study protocol, and a site visit protocol. These documents and other information about ACPEinc are available at its Web site,
ACPEinc standards match the core of APsaA's requirements, but differ in some ways. The principle differences are in the number and duration of supervised cases and the minimum frequency for training analyses and supervised analyses. It accepts and applies APsaA standards for APsaA-affiliated institutes. ACPEinc has established a cooperative and collegial relationship with BOPS and COI. Several of the accredited institutes of APsaA used their preparations for a COI site visit for applying to ACPEinc and vice versa. The accrediting process by BOPS is much more a consultative and ongoing matter than is the usual relationship between the organization to be accredited and its accrediting agency. ACPEinc site visits are also consultative, but are mainly focused on ensuring that the training program is fully in compliance with the core standards. We anticipate that as time goes on the relationship between the two site visiting organizations will further evolve.
It is hoped that the accreditation by ACPEinc will become widely accepted and create a national core standard for all psychoanalytic training in the U.S.A. However, licensure laws in New York state and other places, already seem to accept a much lower standard both for prerequisite training before psychoanalytic training and for the training itself than these ACPEinc requirements. This is a matter of concern for all the consortium organizations and all who advocate for high standards in psychoanalytic training. These apparent trends place ACPEinc in a challenging uphill battle as a champion of high quality training psychoanalytic standards.
Further information about ACPEinc can be obtained at its Web site, .
Editor's Note: This article first appeared in “Free Associations,” Michigan Psychoanalytic Society and Institute Newsletter. V. 36:1, February 2006. It was republished, slightly revised, in the Fall 2007 AAPCSW newsletter. This is a further revision.