On February 6, 2013, the Supreme Court of New York County, New York, granted an injunction, which temporarily blocked the Fishkin Proposal, which was adopted by Council in January, from being implemented until the question of authority over training and educational standards is resolved. Oral arguments were presented at a hearing on March 7, but the central question in this case of who has authority over the setting and implementation of educational and training standards was not resolved; the judge did, however, order that the injunction remain in place until there is a final ruling on this matter. The purpose of this injunction is to preserve the “status quo” in the sense of preventing irreparable harm to our educational system as a result of having two essentially incompatible sets of criteria for training analyst appointment and, ultimately, two philosophically different understandings of what it means to be a training analyst.
The importance of this “time out” is in the opportunity it offers all of us to think about and choose what kind of organization APsaA can and should be.
We believe that it was imperative that this injunction be filed. BOPS Fellows and committee chairs, not to mention institutes and psychoanalytic candidates need to know who is authorized to set and implement the standards for education and training. However, it is not true that we want APsaA to return to the status quo of the last 60 years. For more than 60 years, this organization has been marked by organizational dysfunction and internal acrimony leading to a paralyzing inability to move APsaA into the 21st century. If you have any doubt that the problems we face go back that far, we refer you to a 1953 article in JAPA (JAPA 1953 Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 310-330) that was brought to our attention by Herbert Wyman, a colleague at NYPSI. Although written 60 years ago, this article could have been written 20 years ago, or yesterday. That is how little we have moved in all that time to truly resolve the structural problems that we have. In fact, we hope that no one wants to return to that status quo and hope instead together to take up the opportunity before us to solve our most fundamental problems. The importance of this “time out” is in the opportunity it offers all of us to think about and choose what kind of organization APsaA can and should be.
Over the past three years we have taken specific steps to initiate the kinds of changes that we believe are necessary and consistent with a long-range vision of what the BOPS, the educational component of APsaA can be. In 2010 we:
Appointed two task forces each targeted to study specific opportunities: The Task Force on Child and Adolescent Analysis and the Task Force on University and Medical Center Initiatives. Both will present their Final Reports at the June 2013 Meeting in Washington D.C.
Initiated the Psychoanalytic Development Project, which is a series of studies intended to explore psychoanalytic competence at various stages of an analytic career: at admissions, progressions at the third year and graduation, certification, and at training and supervising analyst appointment.
Adopted the most comprehensive revision of our Training Standards in 60 years.
In 2012, The Board on Professional Standards adopted two more historic changes:
To invite the William Alanson White Institute (WAW) to become a member institute.
To externalize the Certification Examination Committee (CEC) and its research component Certification Advisory Committee on Research and Development (CARD). This externalization was subsequently approved by Executive Committee and Executive Council.
The BOPS vote to externalize the certification process was monumental for several reasons. First, it will remove the credentialing function of certifying psychoanalysts from the membership organization. We are the only health care profession that has its certifying body within its professional membership organization; externalization of certification will bring us into alignment with what is just standard practice in other professions.
Second, it will eventually open certification to any psychoanalyst who meets the criteria determined by the new board. This is particularly important for physicians/psychoanalysts who have no independent certifying board to apply to for credentialing in psychoanalysis.
And finally, externalizing the certification process will open new opportunities for collaboration in researching the examination itself leading to the development of the most meaningful as well as valid and reliable examination possible. This kind of organizational change in one of the most important functions of BOPS is an investment in the future of the profession and our organization.
Moreover, at the January 2013 two-day BOPS Congress, the fellows overwhelmingly adopted two motions which are directly related:
The first motion implored the Executive Council to table a vote on the Fishkin Proposal and join with BOPS to reorganize the entire governance structure of APsaA, including BOPS.
Colleen L. Carney, Ph.D., is chair of the Board on Professional Standards, and Lee I. Ascherman, M.D., is secretary.
The fellows adopted another motion, which calls for a task force to explore the feasibility of externalizing the accrediting functions of the Committee on Institutes, Committee on Child and Adolescent Analysis, and Committee on New Training Facilities, and to specifically investigate the possibility of establishing a formal relationship with the Accreditation Council for Psychoanalytic Education, Inc. (ACPEinc) to jointly accredit/approve APsaA's institutes. This would separate the accrediting function of BOPS from the membership organization itself, as it should be. These structural changes would not only bring us more into alignment with other professional organizations, it is our hope that it would all but halt the conflicts around authority over the functions now performed by the BOPS and its committees. No matter what the outcome of the legal question over educational standard-setting authority, this kind of organizational clarity and efficiency is an investment in the future of psychoanalysis.