We begin this article with excerpts from our Report to BOPS Fellows and the Executive Council at the January 2013 Meeting in response to the resolution Council passed in June 2012. We end with one of the four motions the fellows adopted after discussion of this report, which was brought to the Executive Council on January 17, 2013.
The following is in response to the resolution passed by the Executive Council in June 2012. The resolution reads, “It will be the official policy of APsaA that the appointment of training analysts shall be based on objective and verifiable criteria and the Executive Council encourages BOPS to develop methodologies to implement this policy.”
The resolution itself is an extraordinary and complex action which brings us to the culmination of years of acrimony regarding the role of the Board on Professional Standards in APsaA. Therefore, the response to this action as well as to subsequent actions taken by the president and the proposed actions (i.e., Fishkin and Jaffe Motions), which are on the Council agenda at this meeting require a careful and thorough review and one which has as its primary focus the integrity of this Association, the stability of our psychoanalytic institutes, continuity and reassurance for our candidates in training, and the best interest of our profession and the public which we serve. Insofar as the resolution was passed at the June 2012 meeting, after the June meeting of BOPS and a request for a special meeting of BOPS Fellows in October was denied, we called a special two-day congress of the fellows to be held on January 15 and 16 of this week. At the congress we planned to ask the fellows to discuss all aspects of Council's June resolution, its meaning for the organization, the potential impact on their psychoanalytic institutes, and, especially, the meaning for the role of the Board on Professional Standards. The BOPS response will include five parts:
The Significance of the Resolution for APsaA
The Content of the Policy Adopted by APsaA in June
BOPS's Advisory Opinion to Executive Council
Proposal to Resolve Long Standing Internal Conflicts
Appendices
The APsaA which we all knew before June 2012 no longer exists. The resolution itself and the president's subsequent appointment of a task force to implement it, has altered the fundamental organizational structure of APsaA. The president's task force represents a second but shadow standard-setting body which is operating parallel to the Committee on Institutes (COI), a committee of BOPS. This redundancy of this standard-setting function and the confusion which it threatens to introduce into our training programs highlights the most immediate question which this organization should address and resolve: Which APsaA body has the authority to set the standards for training and education?
APsaA has known for at least 10 years that its bylaws were not in compliance with the New York Non-Profit Corporate Statute which prohibits any committee of the corporation, such as BOPS, to operate outside of the oversight of its board of directors. This statute governing not-for-profit corporations in New York State was adopted in 2003. BOPS is neither ignoring nor disputing that statute. However, APsaA's organizational structure and its bylaws preceded the adoption of this statute by 50 years and this makes the matter more complex. APsaA's legal counsel has consistently advised that the remedy is to reorganize and to amend the bylaws; it has never advised APsaA to ignore its own bylaws. Moreover, we have been advised by an independent counsel, APsaA's counsel, as well as an attorney in the New York State Attorney General's Office that given the very specific language in our bylaws which gives to BOPS the sole authority to establish training and professional standards that, if such a bylaw provision was challenged, as it now has been, that it is unclear which body would be found to have the ultimate authority over these functions. We have been further advised that this issue could only be decided in a court of law.
It is our sincere hope that the Council and BOPS will work together to resolve this question internally and avoid a lengthy, expensive, and contentious legal process. That being said, we believe that the question of authority over these standard-setting functions is the first priority for this organization to address and resolve in order to assuage internal chaos, potential schisms, and confusion in our training programs. The recent findings of the BOPS appointed Reference Committee to study the compatibility of the Pyles Perlman Procci (PPP) proposal with our organizational and educational documents demonstrate the degree to which a single proposal, no matter how well intentioned and popular with some of the membership, can introduce irreconcilable contradictions into our educational system. This is both unnecessary and could result in irreparable damage. To this end, we ask that Council refrain from any further challenges to the BOPS standard-setting authority as outlined in our bylaws and work with us to resolve this matter internally.
The Board on Professional Standards recommends that Council set as its highest priority the resolution of the internal conflicts in our governance structure and particularly the question of authority over educational, training, and professional standard-setting functions.
Colleen L. Carney, Ph.D., is chair of the Board on Professional Standards, and Lee I. Ascherman, M.D., is secretary.
These functions should not be in a membership organization and the previous agreed upon structure to keep these separate no longer exists.
In January 2012, BOPS voted to externalize the Certification Examination Committee (CEC) and its research component, the Certification Advisory and Research Development Committee (CARD). The Task Force to Externalize Certification has begun to implement this decision and will be reporting on the status of this process at this Council meeting.
BOPS believes that it is equally advisable at this time to explore the feasibility of externalizing the accrediting/approving function of BOPS, now under the purview of the Committee on Institutes (COI), the Committee on New Training Facilities (CNTF), the Committee on Free Standing Institutes (CAFI), the Committee on Child and Adolescent Analysis (COCAA), and all other committees of BOPS which directly pertain to standard setting and oversight of our 31 psychoanalytic institutes.
It is our belief that separating these regulatory functions of BOPS from the membership organization bears the greatest promise of preventing major splits in the organization either through large numbers of members or institutes leaving the parent organization because of irreconcilable differences based on principles which cannot be compromised. Moreover, we believe that in doing so we would bring APsaA more in line with the structure of other health care professional organizations, strengthen our alliance with other psychoanalytic organizations, resolve the intrinsic conflict between our bylaws and New York non-profit corporate law, and, most importantly, allow APsaA members to work together for the good of the profession while also addressing individual concerns.
(Sections 2 and 4 of this report will be covered in an upcoming issue of TAP)
Two of the four motions adopted by BOPS at the January congress were directly related to this BOPS Response to Council, but we will highlight only the first:
This body (BOPS) requests Council to put a moratorium on its effort to establish educational standards and instead join BOPS in its effort to reorganize the entire governance of APsaA, the nature of this joint effort to be codetermined by BOPS and Council. This joint effort will aim to determine a clear and coherent delineation of authority and related delegation of functions in the organization in the determination of all policies—membership, education, and otherwise. In order for the proposed convention to work with maximum freedom consistent with APsaA's strategic plan, it is moved that there be a moratorium from all additional action and bylaw change proposals that relate to our organization's governance structure.
The Executive Council deferred a discussion of this BOPS Motion until late afternoon and instead discussed and voted on the Fishkin Proposal, which would replace the criteria and procedures for training analyst appointment as outlined in the Standards for Education and Training in Psychoanalysis adopted by BOPS in June 2012. The Fishkin Proposal was passed by Council. Subsequently, on February 6, 2013, a temporary restraining order was issued by the Supreme Court of New York that enjoins the Association from implementing the new criteria and from appointing training analysts using the new criteria. However, the Ad Hoc Committee created by the Executive Council can meet to develop its procedures.