Pre-Graduation Certification
The chair and secretary of the Board on Professional Standards are devoting their column to a review of the Pre-Graduation Certification Program authored by Harvey Schwartz, chair of the Certification Examination Committee (CEC), and a first-hand account of the experience by a recent participant, Jamie Cromer.
The Pre-Graduation Certification Program has been very well received by candidates. Its introduction parallels that of other professions that are increasingly beginning their certification evaluations during the training period. Part I consists of writing up two analytic cases of patients in middle-phase, who can be of the same gender. It also entails presenting process notes from those cases to two interviewers. After graduation, Part II can be taken, which includes writing up a terminated case. The write-ups are studied by the certification committee composed of analysts from around the country who are entirely blind to the identity of the applicant. Unlike local faculty, the entire committee functions free from the inevitable influences of personal familiarity. They do not know the applicant's name; they do not know the applicant's institute; they do not know the applicant's professional degree. Nothing. All they have before them is the clinical work of the candidate analyst.
The Board on Professional Standards is encouraging all our institutes to promote the pre-graduation pathway to certification because it is so consistent with our shared goals for psychoanalytic education and the development of a psychoanalytic identity, confidence and commitment. The pre-graduation pathway also emphasizes the educational value of this process, rather than its value being solely limited to that of a link to training analyst appointment.
I can say a great deal more about this program of which I am very proud. Better though to leave that to the candidates who are taking it. Below is a piece written by Jamie Cromer who took the Part I Pre-Graduation Exam, passed it and then returned this past January to sit for Part II. She wrote about her experience in the most recent Candidate Connection newsletter, and with permission we reproduce it in TAP for all our members.
Harvey Schwartz, M.D., is chair of the Certification Examination Committee, training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, and clinical professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University.