At the APsaA Annual Meeting in Chicago, the Executive Council passed the following resolution:
It is the policy of the Association that the appointment of training analyst be based on objective and verifiable criteria, and the Executive Council encourages the Board on Professional Standards (BOPS) to develop methodology to implement this policy.
In this resolution, the Executive Council chose to usurp the Board on Professional Standards' authority and responsibility for educational decisions and the setting of professional standards in the training and education of our candidates. With this action, the Executive Council, APsaA's board of directors, ruptured the more than 65-year-old working agreement within our organization to honor the separation of membership issues from those pertaining to educational and standard-setting functions, responsibilities historically held by BOPS. The exclusive role of the Board on Professional Standards, which is clearly outlined in our bylaws, is to establish policies and procedures related to educational matters, approval of APsaA institutes, professional certification, and the qualifications for those who will analyze and supervise candidates in our 31 institutes.
With this action, Council has fundamentally redefined the locus of this standard-setting authority, its working relationship with the Board on Professional Standards as well as our organization as a whole, and has done so with relatively little input from our institutes or the general membership.
There have been increasing pressures on the Board on Professional Standards to alter either its structure or its authority, most recently reflected in two proposals brought to the Board on Professional Standards for its consideration at the June meeting. One proposed to change the requirements that the Fellows of the Board be both certified in psychoanalysis and be training and/or supervising analysts, qualifications that are stipulated in our bylaws. The other proposal introduced a sweeping redefinition of the qualifications for training analyst appointment. Neither was voted on at the BOPS meeting. Instead, the discussion among the fellows clarified for the BOPS chair our need to explore the standard practices of allied health care professions as to the qualifications of individuals sitting on their respective standard-setting boards. It is and continues to be our position that we, like all professions, have a responsibility to follow standard professional practices and to protect the public through a commitment to certification and formal peer review of clinical work.
It is of great concern to us that such a significant change to the role of the Board on Professional Standards has been proposed without the involvement of institutes and their representatives.
Most professional organizations have their professional and educational standard-setting boards external to the membership organization or, as in the case of the American Psychological Association, it is firewalled within the organization, protecting it from pressures of individual or special interests bearing down on decisions that are educational and professional in nature. If the institutes and the membership really want to restructure APsaA or prefer APsaA to be a membership only organization, this might best be accomplished through a comprehensive reorganization of APsaA and a complete rewriting of our bylaws. This is the recommendation of the recent Strategic Planning Task Force, a recommendation that restates the previous advice of numerous legal experts and professional consultants. Specifically, the task force suggested that APsaA “move to a governance structure, operations, and policy and procedures consistent with model professional association best practices.”
The Board on Professional Standards is a body of institutes, each represented by two Fellows of the Board; the fellows and institutes are our constituency. It is of great concern to us that such a significant change to the role of the Board on Professional Standards has been proposed without the involvement of institutes and their representatives. Over the next few months, our highest priority will be to help the Fellows of the Board to speak to their institute leaders to learn how they would like the Board on Professional Standards to proceed under these circumstances.
We will hold a special two-day congress for the Fellows of the Board and for Education Committee chairs of all institutes at the 2013 APsaA National Meeting in January. As we develop the forum and focus of this special congress we will communicate this information to the fellows. Fellows of the Board and EC chairs will be informed of the details well in advance of the meeting. We urge all BOPS Fellows and EC chairs to attend the National Meeting in January 2013 and this extremely important congress.
Colleen L. Carney, Ph.D., is chair of the Board on Professional Standards, and Lee I. Ascherman, M.D., is secretary and chair-elect.