As I sit down to write this column, here in Pasadena, the long, languid days of summer, evocative of childhood and the promises of vacation, are yielding to the sense of a new beginning with the start of the fall academic year.
One of the joys of summertime this year was attending the IPA meeting in Mexico City. It was gratifying in many ways. Attendance exceeded expectations. The city itself offered many incredible charms including some of the most interesting art, architecture, and museums I've seen, and the meeting facilities were state of the art. The highlight, however, was the meeting itself. The three major panels offered fealty to our long-standing heritage, with “The Unconscious,” “Dreams,” and “Sexuality” as the subjects. Always a joy, we met new colleagues from such novel locales as Turkey, Lebanon, and Vilnius. Moscow has become reestablished as a receptive home for psychoanalysis, and the next IPA meeting will occur in Prague in 2013.
While there was widespread acknowledgment of the serious problems facing all of us, and they are worldwide, reflecting the phenomenon of “internationalism,” there was no pessimism or discouragement to be found, but instead an energy and a sense of resoluteness to find solutions. Just as we have been able to export psychoanalysis to these new markets around the world, there is also a spirit of being able to enhance psychoanalysis in our well-established areas.
I would like to discuss how IPA's approach to the current problems facing the profession has much in common with our own. They have embraced, as we have, the importance of strategic planning. Their history with this approach dates back to 2001 when they first approved such a plan, the Strategy and Mission (SAM) project. In addition to proposing significant changes to IPA's governance structure, SAM proposed a new mission for IPA, namely “to assure the vigor and development of psychoanalysis,” quite in line with the goals we are supporting. It was also clear to IPA governance, that “the membership wants IPA to achieve real outcomes rather than engaging in a multitude of activities whose contribution to individual analysts' day-to-day work is not clear.” I categorically agree with this approach. I have been personally involved with APsaA governance as an officer for more than nine years. During this time, I have been part of our budgeting processes where we have responded to requests for funding mainly based on the availability of funds rather than on whether these expenditures will support our needs. As you can see, IPA has taken the position that they must “move away from the general activities-based approach to the targeting of all IPA resources towards strategic choices.” They explicitly acknowledge the need to “deploy resources to specific ends.” And so must we.
It is also striking that IPA has identified that “the profession is losing market share” and this loss of market share is occurring paradoxically in an expanding health care market. In one of their Strategic Plan documents, IPA acknowledges the very real prospect that we might find that “ultimately it is not much use being a highly trained and competent analyst if he or she cannot attract patients and earn a reasonable living.“ We cannot let this happen; it would be a disservice to our candidates. These are sentiments that I have been actively expressing for many of my leadership years in APsaA.
IPA initially proposed their Strategic Plan with two primary strategic outcomes in mind: “to enhance the sense of belonging to an international psychoanalytic community” and “actively encourage the promotion of psychoanalysis as a means of treatment.” The IPA strategic planning group has just proposed adding a third outcome. And this is worth our attention as well. This outcome derives from IPA's accreditation role and is concerned with the quality of treatment and training. This objective is framed as reinvigorating “professional learning and interchange on a global basis in order to improve the quality of treatment in training.”
I suspect that all of us have felt the impact of what is referred to as the global financial crisis of the last several years. If we had doubted the impact of the concept of “internationalism,” it most certainly has been brought into our homes and offices with the market turmoil of recent years. IPA's position and proposed plan are strikingly similar to ours as we all are aiming towards achieving similar outcomes for the profession in grappling with what is a major worldwide problem.
Our own strategic plan continues to evolve. I invite all of you to visit the member pages of the APsaA Web site (www.apsa.org). After getting to the Web site, go to the Members' section and click it, then click “Association Documents” to review the goals and objectives which are clearly outlined there. Discuss them with your colleagues, locally and nationally, and let us know what you think. After our task force meets in New York in December to move our own plan towards implementation, I will keep you informed of our progress.
I wish all of you a positive new beginning in the current academic year.
Warren R. Procci, M.D., is president of the American Psychoanalytic Association.