At the January 2015 meeting of the Board on Professional Standards (BOPS), the Task Force on Externalization of Certification presented its recommendations for the establishment of an independent certifying agency, the American Board of Psychoanalysis (ABP). BOPS approved this recommendation by a vote of 48 to 1. We want to clarify both the impetus for the formation of this task force and the planned procedures of the newly formed ABP.
The issue of externalizing certification is not new to APsaA. Beginning in 1998 a series of task forces have been appointed to study the externalization of certification of individual analysts and/or accreditation of institutes. Each task force attempted to address the divisive political and philosophical controversies that surround certification, the training analyst system, and accreditation of institutes by proposing the establishment of independent organizations that would take on some or all of BOPS functions. The 1998 task force made a series of recommendations, three of which were adopted, changing the character of certification. However a recommendation to externalize certification was not adopted.
The 2006 Renew Plan recommended a significant change in the structure of APsaA, transferring all BOPS functions to an independent corporation. In 2008 a joint task force was appointed to once again study the externalization of BOPS functions and recommended four options by which certification and accreditation functions could be separated from the membership function of APsaA. The 2006 and the 2008 recommendations were not adopted.
The current task force was appointed in 2012. Its mandate was not focused on addressing divisiveness regarding the role of certification within APsaA, but rather on creating an independent certifying agency, so certification in psychoanalysis would have the same status as certification in any other profession in the eyes of the public, other professions, and governmental agencies. A second, related goal emerged as the task force began its work: We wanted to support the educational and professional value of certification in and of itself, independent of whatever role it served within APsaA. The creation of an independent agency to certify psychoanalysts will not change the structure of APsaA and, by itself, has no bearing on the controversies regarding the TA system or national vs. local standard setting, both of which will still have to be addressed within APsaA.
There are several important reasons to conduct certification under independent auspices. An autonomous certification has greater public standing. It therefore allows us to present credentials to state legislatures to counter the efforts by other politically active psychoanalytic organizations representing psychoanalysts with more limited training and experience who wish to influence state licensing criteria. Furthermore, an independent certification board confers a credential more appropriate to the needs of the public, providing more widely accepted recognition of certified analysts while also promoting the professionalism of psychoanalysis.
There are, in fact, nationally accepted guidelines for certifying agencies set by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies. The task force studied these guidelines as well as the procedures of several certifying organizations. We learned that to be credible and publicly recognized, a certifying program must function completely autonomously and be free from “undue influence” from membership organizations, educational institutions that train applicants for certification or any other conflicting interests. To ensure that autonomy, we have established the ABP as an independent corporation under whose auspices certification in psychoanalysis could be conducted. To further protect that autonomy, we have written bylaws that make sitting officers and fellows of BOPS, Council members, and elected or paid officials of APsaA ineligible to sit on the board. In addition, the ABP will be financially independent of APsaA or any other psychoanalytic organization.
Some members of the task force, including the current chairs of the Certification Examination Committee (CEC) and the Certification Advisory Research and Development (CARD) Committee will serve on a transitional board that will have a two-year term and then select the first regular board. In addition to the chairs of CEC and CARD, regular board members will include certified adult psychoanalysts, certified child psychoanalysts, a public member and members with specific expertise related to the needs of the ABP.
The board will not conduct certification; the certification assessment and interviews will be conducted by a certification committee, as a subcommittee of the board. Harvey Schwartz, current CEC chair, and the current members of CEC have agreed to serve on that committee. The board will oversee the work of the certification committee and will be responsible for maintaining a list of certified analysts in good standing with regard to ethics and licensure. This list will be available to the public on an ABP website. There will be a modest yearly fee to support this function. There are no planned immediate changes to the procedure of certification so the transition to an independently administered certification can be seamless for applicants, beginning with the January 2016 Certification Committee meeting.
Stacey Keller, M.D., is the co-chair of the Task Force on Externalization of Certification, and a former director of the Denver Institute for Psychoanalysis where she is a training and supervising analyst.
Richard Weiss, M.D., co-chair of the Task Force on Externalization of Certification, is a former dean of New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute where he is a training and supervising analyst and member of the faculty.
The ABP will continue to offer the pre-graduation certification program. Part I takes place while the applicant is a candidate and entails submitting two written case reports of patients in the middle phase of their analyses; both patients can be of the same gender. Part II takes place after graduation and consists of presenting a case demonstrating a termination experience. If the two patients presented for Part I are of the same gender, the applicant presents a third case of the other gender.
Additionally, all currently certified members of APsaA can elect to have their certification grandfathered by the ABP. Certification for internal APsaA requirements will be conducted by BOPS utilizing a new, smaller CEC that will incorporate the assessment of the independent board into its criteria for APsaA certification.
We understand that certification has been the focus of long-standing tensions within APsaA with regard to the TA system and the balance between national and local standards. Historically, there were problems in the way certification was conducted, and how it was used to stratify the APsaA membership. While it may seem difficult to view the issue through any other lens, the task force has been solely occupied with certification at the interface between psychoanalysis and the public, and the professional and educational functions of certification. The vast majority of recent certification applicants report that certification interviews were collegial, respectful, educational and meaningful to their identity as psychoanalysts. The two-part pre-graduation certification has enriched the education of candidates. We think this has been beneficial for the individual psychoanalysts and the profession.
The ABP will face many challenges. Our goal is to make certification in psychoanalysis available not only to APsaA and IPA graduated analysts but to analysts from many other institutes as well. This will create inevitable tensions regarding eligibility to sit for ABP certification. It will also necessitate the appointment of board members certified by non-APsaA certifying bodies. Like any certifying board, ABP will need input from practitioners and educators to ensure that the core competencies it assesses are relevant to the field as it changes over time. The board will continue to communicate with APsaA members regarding the time frame for its functions to come on line and will request needed feedback from all interested parties.
Editor's Note: The BOPS chair invited guest columnists to write for this issue; the regular BOPS column should return in the next issue.