My father was not a man to give advice yet on one occasion when I was in my late teens, he spontaneously offered, “Never trust a man who smokes a pipe, and never take a business partner.”
The latter made sense to me as he had been traumatized by the relationship with his business partner. Having been good friends throughout the partnership, at some point my father wanted to change terms. Negotiations were difficult, threatening their friendship, and then, suddenly, his partner died of a massive heart attack. I had never before or after seen my father that upset.
He was obviously pleased when I chose a career path that allowed me to be a solo practitioner.
The goal of our training is to help candidates think “psychoanalytically.” But is that enough?
The advice about pipe smokers was never clear. In later years, I speculated, in my father's mind, smoking a pipe may have been connected to something pretentious or disingenuous. Although he liked material things, especially cars and Italian shoes, these were not signs of pretension but rather the enjoyable fruits of his hard work after having grown up poor. Family, friends and colleagues appreciated his authenticity.
I remember when I was an early adolescent, he and a group of golfing friends applied for membership in one of the country clubs in Grand Rapids where I grew up. All were turned down, blackballed because they were Jewish. They tried two other local clubs with the same results. Only later during my first analysis, I realized that the president of one of those clubs was a school friend's father who smoked a pipe.
These particular memories came to mind as I began writing my first column as your president. The challenges we face today as analysts and members of the oldest psychoanalytic organization in the United States are great. On the one hand, APsaA institutes have provided some of the best psychoanalytic education. On the other hand, we too were once a “restricted and exclusive club.” Although we have seriously changed since I become a member in 1989, my application followed a lawsuit. Negative aspects of our history remain and continue to need transformation.
For example, how many colleagues and patients of color are part of your professional and personal world or practice today? How many courses are being taught in your institutes regarding the impact of culture on analytic treatment? What efforts is your institute or center making to recruit candidates from diverse backgrounds (color, ethnicity, sexual orientation)?
The Task Force on Diversity is addressing these issues, first by gathering data from local groups and then providing recommendations and strategies to transform our local groups and national organization to reflect the diverse communities where we live, practice and educate.
The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.
But diversity is not only about race, culture, gender, sexuality or ethnicity. Does our psychoanalytic education prepare candidates for practice in the year 2014? Our training requires at least three supervised psychoanalytic cases. Most would agree about the educational benefits of such training. But how does curriculum and supervision prepare candidates to deal with the challenges of working with patients possibly less than three or four times a week? The goal of our training is to help candidates think “psychoanalytically.” But is that enough?
Does our training help future analysts work beyond our offices in the community—in schools, businesses and organizations, arts, or politics and policy impacting our world? How diverse are our training programs regarding various psychoanalytic schools of thought? Are candidates equally exposed to ego psychology, self psychology, object relations, relational perspectives and subgroups of these? Are we fully committed to widening the scope of psychoanalytic treatment, as I believe Freud was? Are we not obligated to teach psychoanalytic theory and practice that can address a diverse patient population with different psychological social and cultural difficulties including those with severe symptoms often marginalized or simply treated with questionable medications?
Mark Smaller, Ph.D., is president of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
I would like to redefine the so-called gold of psychoanalysis. How about the new gold of thinking analytically and in creative ways with severely troubled patients in our offices and beyond? How about in preschools, prisons, and VA clinics and hospitals? A recent discussion on our lists addressed new and creative ways, including Skype treatment, to address many of these issues and creatively consider new ways of providing treatment. Can we commit to psychoanalysis outside of large cities where people live and are in need of what we can offer?
The welfare of children is a psychoanalytic value and commitment. Are we doing enough to engage prospective candidates in child analytic education? Have we grown out of a time when child analysis was a sort of “distant cousin” of analytic training? A recent proposal of a group of child analysts to create a center for child analysis and training is being considered and could be a huge step in promoting psychoanalytic work with children and their families as the Anna Freud Centre once did.
When the Chicago Institute, the second oldest institute and one of the largest in our Association, decides that our training analyst system is no longer viable in its efforts to admit new candidates, we must listen and pay serious attention and not merely default to a focus on rules. Institutes are struggling, as reported by our BOPS leadership, and certainly the causes of those struggles are many. However, the TA system in many of our local groups has interfered with morale, morale that is critical to address challenges we face together.
I will continue the work of many others to dismantle this unproven and unverifiable system of education. A personal analyst system will facilitate a more effective educational system and do away, once and for all, with a divisive and exclusionary aspect of our past. I believe we can work toward creating a new personal analyst system that insures real standards of quality education. Analysis is a clinical experience but, more importantly, a personal one. However, I remain in favor of local groups deciding their own system of TA/personal analyst appointment. Only diverse perspectives in training will be acceptable. No one person, group or institute has the final word on what works regarding analytic training and treatment.
And finally, research must become a foundation of what we do, the way we educate and think, and the way we present psychoanalysis out in the world. We are reorganizing research efforts to recognize and facilitate the case study and hermeneutic method, quantitative treatment efficacy findings, and neuropsychoanalytic research. Our research department and efforts will be diverse in orientation, fundraising, and application. This research will be integrated with our educational efforts.
Friends and colleagues, I believe my position as your president demands partnering with all of you in these efforts. I need your help.
With this partnership I believe we can move psychoanalysis and APsaA forward into the next “golden age of psychoanalysis,” and lead in a way that can make all of us proud of our organization and our field.