I am a third-year candidate at the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis and have been closely following the controversy around certification, and discussing this with senior colleagues as well as fellow candidates from around the country. While the issues being debated are important, the vitriol and energy being put into this is dispiriting. It is like being in a family where the parents are arguing vehemently over where the children are to attend school next year, as the house burns down around us.
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Sure, educational standards are important, but more important is attracting more practitioners and patients to psychoanalysis. Already clinical psychoanalysis is seen as a curiosity, an anachronism, among many of our therapist colleagues, let alone the lay public. Our membership is rapidly declining through natural attrition and our lack of ability to attract candidates. We need to mourn the loss of what was, embrace change, and retool training and our organization for the 21st century. It's time to leapfrog over the same tired arguments if we are to remain at all relevant. There are too few of us to spend time rehashing the same tired rhetoric. We need to make our tent as big as possible, and work together to attract and train as many people as possible, or our collective wisdom will be lost in just one more generation. What a terrible loss that would be.
Thomas N. Franklin, M.D.
Associate Medical Director, The Retreat at Sheppard Pratt, Baltimore