My Personal APsaA Story

I was an analysand for six months before I entered candidacy. I tell you this so you will know how far back my mind and I were when I began this radical, reform journey with the following thoughts. In those early days of my analysis, I took note of the myriad professional activities my training analyst engaged in; he canceled at odd times that did not coincide with recognized holidays. Like, what was it about January that led to a week's cancellation so closely following the disruptions of the winter holiday season? Struggling to locate my relative importance in the scheme of his activities, I imagined the analytic enterprise as a pyramid. I, the patient, occupied the pinnacle, while the increasing bulk below represented all the activities of the analyst outside the consulting room. The question pressing on me, then, was which way did the pyramid orient? Tip up or down? Did he attend professional activities in order to be a better analyst to his patients (tip up), or were his patients there to provide material to participate in all his other professional engagements (tip down)? This chicken-or-egg conundrum occupied me for quite a while. But I have figured it out. You need both, of course. You cannot be an analyst without collegial interaction and support. You cannot evolve towards higher levels of analytic competence without continuing professional activity.

I went to my first APsaA National Meeting the winter of my first year of candidacy. I was the delegate representative from my institute to the Candidates' Council (CC). Attending the CC meeting, I was excited to be in the large room, seated at tables arranged in an enormous square, facing candidates from across the country. There was also a group of international students representing the International Psychoanalytic Studies Organization (IPSO), the candidates' organization affiliated with the IPA. All were strangers to me, and I wondered if they all already felt comfortably sure of their role there, as I did not. I reminded myself I had an official role as delegate, although I was not entirely sure what that job entailed. What I knew was that I wanted to get involved in my national professional organization. I had lacked this kind of involvement in my other life, when I was a clinical psychologist working in private practice; the national professional meeting I had once attended had been thoroughly disappointing on account of its dearth of psychoanalytic content.

Now, at my first APsaA meeting, Phoebe Cirio, today the CC presidentelect, announced she was vacating the chair of the CC Scientific Paper Prize. Anyone interested could talk to her about it. I jumped at the chance to become active on a committee and said I would do it. That simple, I was on board the Candidates' Council as a committee chair. Within a couple of months, a call was sent out for an assistant editor of the candidates' newsletter. I grabbed that, too. Within a year, I was the editor, giving it up only when I became president-elect the following year.

Becoming involved in the Candidates' Council has meant I am on the ground during the biannual APsaA meetings. As a result, I have been in the right place at the right time for so many enjoyable professional opportunities. My work on the committees of the CC has given me the experience and confidence to venture further into the national and international professional arenas of APsaA and the IPA. I have chaired sessions, presented clinical material, been a discussant and a coordinator/reporter, participated on a candidate panel, and created a Writing Workshop. In the process, I have made dear friendships with candidates from APsaA and IPSO. We get together every six months, during the national meetings, for a week combining collegiality and camaraderie. I have more recently become aware that these relationships are turning into an excellent source of patient referrals.

In my week-to-week work life, for many daily hours, I am in my consulting room, tending to my patients, listening, interpreting, absorbing their experiences, their affect, hoping my interventions are useful. To keep myself fresh, to learn more, to broaden the scope of the patients I feel competent to help, I need the intensive learning opportunity APsaA national meetings are designed to provide. Beyond the contribution to my continuing education, the meetings have become a wonderful source of enduring friendships and colleagues. Their regional differences from my way of working and thinking give me food for thought. Among the candidates at APsaA, I have encountered an open-mindedness to

ways of thinking analytically which were not taught at our individual institutes. We are all hungry to learn and welcome encounters with ideas new to our experience.

Thus, when IPSO asked me to be a discussant on a candidate panel featuring a clinical case presentation, I was told the panelists were selected specifically to represent geographic differences in analytic culture; the case presenter was from Hungary, the other discussant was from South America, and I represented the United States. Following all three presentations, the audience of international candidates engaged in an open discussion. The opportunity to hear alternative theoretical explanations of the clinical material was mind expanding.

Candidates who have a heavy burden of work, family and educational obligations may think attending a national, professional association meeting is just another obligation that is expensive, time-consuming, and not necessary. On the contrary, APsaA national meetings are a refueling experience for many who try it. Our work is intense, and our ways of thinking and knowing appear peculiar to the layperson. APsaA provides a national, professional network for candidates and analysts to feel supported in our training and careers, offering many resources to augment the practical and educational provisions we get at our institutes.

To learn more about APsaA and the candidates' organization, look at the APsaA website, and especially the Candidates' section; our newly revised “Policies and Procedures” document details the structure and function of all the CC committees. Or you can contact any officer or committee chair of the Candidates' Council for information on how to get involved. Best yet, attend an APsaA national meeting. We will orient you to the program to help you get the most out of the time you spend, offer you many opportunities to get involved in Candidates' Council and APsaA committees, and invite you to our wonderful candidates' parties.

Editor's Note: This column was adapted from Navah Kaplan's column in the June 2014 / Volume 16, Issue 2 of the Candidate Connection newsletter.