This is my last opportunity to write to you as president of APsaA. A role I have much enjoyed. It has not been without its tribulations, but it has always been an honor to be a leader of an organization that supports so noble an endeavor as psychoanalysis. I will use my valedictory to describe some of what I have learned during my tenure and provide some strong recommendations that I have for all of you, as well as for my successors.
… it has always been an honor to be a leader of an organization that supports so noble an endeavor as psychoanalysis.
First of all, we are still a very well kept secret. I was recently a discussant for the USC Residents' Movie Night, remarking on David Cronenberg's film “A Dangerous Method.” There is a powerful scene where Ferenczi, Freud, and Jung are on the deck of the George Washington, the steamer that brought them to the United States for their famous 1909 visit. As they look at the Statue of Liberty, Jung enthusiastically comments that here is the future. Freud, ever the realist, even the pessimist, comments that they are bringing the plague. A hundred years later, this ambivalence remains. I consider analysis to be a most powerful method, albeit in the right hands and most certainly with the right patients. Most of us who have been doing this work for any length of time have seen analysands who make spectacular life changes, so our first and overwhelming concern is still to do what we have not been able to do in our hundred-year-plus history, and that is to make the “unconscious conscious,” make the public aware that we are a powerful tool for a distinct group of patients.
A second task necessitated by my first point is also something we have not done, at least during my tenure. My services as an APsaA leader began with six years as your treasurer (2002-2008), a job that delighted me. It is always said that if you look at an organization's budget, you will understand its purpose and priorities. Unfortunately, this was not so clearly the case with APsaA. I well recall my first Budget and Finance Committee meeting. We considered requests for funding from our melting pot of committees. It seemed to me almost a “first come, first serve” process in our consideration for funding. There was little or no overall planning on how best to utilize our limited funds in the service of an overarching APsaA purpose.
This cannot continue. This is in large measure why I have devoted much of my energy to bringing the concept of strategic planning to APsaA. We must, as an organization, together develop our priority activities and those must be the functions that we fund, and we must make certain that they succeed. We are facing the risk of becoming an irrelevancy in the health care world and our tool is far too valuable to go unused.
A third point is that we will need mechanisms in place to assure that we can succeed in advancing our profession. With some personal misgivings, I think APsaA needs more than a “volunteer” president and officers. Yes, I am paid a stipend, but it is not at all commensurate with the task, and certainly the nominal salaries of the other officers do not at all match their efforts. The world our organization faces has changed. Once upon a time volunteer leaders could devote a few hours a week to APsaA and enough new candidates and patients came our way so that we continued to grow and develop. That time is not now. Just as we decided, and in retrospect quite wisely so, to move from an administrative director to an executive director several years ago, I believe it is now time to have officers who do not attempt to fit the work of APsaA into busy clinical and teaching schedules. This is our equivalent of “the kindness of strangers.” We can no longer rely on the “tired energies of tired men” and that of tired women as well.
I'll make one addendum to the above point. We need a board of directors that can be the appropriate balance and catalyst for our officers. We need a board that can meet more than twice a year and whose meetings allow time for ample opportunity to consider some critical issues in detail. We also need opportunities for board members to bond with each other and build relationships. This can help undermine the kind of fractiousness and minority group efforts that have hampered board function in recent years. Our Council has been hampered by its current structure, rather than any lack of good will. As a result, it has not been able to do those things so necessary for an optimally functioning board.
We also need major changes in our TA system, which is why I joined in support of the Pyles-Perlman-Procci Proposal to help achieve that. And we need to move the evaluation of individual members outside of our Association if we intend to maintain the function. The divisiveness that this has caused is corrosive and should not continue.
Warren R. Procci, M.D., is president of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
Here is my final point for this note. In order to accomplish these goals, our current resources, especially our financial resources, are simply not adequate. We desperately need a program of development. Several times during my various campaigns, I have spoken about this to members. In many cases, many of them did not have the slightest idea what is meant by “a program of development.” This too must end.
While my term is over, my devotion to our profession and to APsaA remains intact as does my interest and my vigor. I assume that I will find ways to continue to serve our Association and, despite having an avowed Freudian orientation, I hope to see your new visions for psychoanalysis in America far surpass that of Freud's.