While struggling to write my last column as APsaA president, and with so many feelings darting about my office, I received a call. A journalist was writing a feature article about the current presidential election. She wondered what psychoanalysts were thinking about this election—the relationship between candidates and voters, maternal and paternal transference (her words) feelings towards candidates, charisma and narcissism of candidates and why such qualities engage or turn off voters. She wondered if patients in my practice spoke more about this election cycle than in the past.
This reporter's sophistication regarding psychoanalytic perspectives was striking. She had interviewed me and a number of colleagues over the past few years and had come to value what we have to offer about various social and mental health issues, and psychoanalysis as a profession. Her questions and articles have consistently reflected a serious knowledge, thoughtfulness and appreciation for our field.
We spoke about the dynamic relationship between candidates and voters, how one candidate is embraced by a group because he or she speaks with empathy to ideas, wishes, longings and aspirations of that group. The voter feels listened to and responds to the candidate who most closely expresses his subjective view of the world, and maybe most important, does so with authenticity and affect that resonates with the voter. Idealizations easily emerge, as well as intense negativity towards candidates.
We discussed how in this presidential election cycle, many citizens are feeling marginalized, if not neglected, on both ends of the political spectrum. With that marginalization comes anger, helplessness and even rage. A candidate appeals to a group when that anger is responded to with promises, realistic or completely unrealistic, that the candidate will fix things and make that anger and helplessness go away. By attaching to the powerful leader, the group feels powerful and helplessness fades.
Sadly, and in a sometimes frightening way, some of those promises involve candidates marginalizing, if not condemning certain ethnic and racial groups, other candidates, or the president, implying somehow that helplessness and rage regarding terrorism, for example, would go away if we just rid ourselves of this group, or that individual. And, as we know, people behave in groups in ways they would not behave as individuals. The dysregulation leads to the violence that erupted at rallies, and has put all of us on edge. I reported to the journalist that, in addition to my own anxiety, my family, friends and patients were similarly occupied.
Once off the phone with the reporter my mind wandered to the state of APsaA when I ran for president in 2010, and then again in 2012. Many members in various psychoanalytic “camps” felt angry, frightened, discouraged and helpless. Their view of psychoanalysis—in education, standards, research, application of psychoanalytic ideas in the community—was not being heard, appreciated, valued or understood.
I was one of those members. Those feelings were a significant part of running, especially a second time, and my view must have reflected the view of a majority of members that generously gave me an opportunity to serve. And for a time as president-elect, I imagined or at least was determined to keep my campaign promises that APsaA would change, and seriously change, damn it! (I can't help but consider the tone of current candidates running for U.S. president.)
What I did not realize, what was completely outside my awareness, and what I could not have predicted through two campaigns, or even as president-elect, was that the change was not necessarily just about APsaA.
Something was changing in me. Or putting it slightly different—any change in APsaA I might facilitate demanded an inevitable and critical change in me.
It first became apparent during the first meeting of the Executive Committee in Chicago in June 2014 that I chaired as a new president. I told the group we needed to put an end to the lawsuit appeal. No one disagreed. With that, for the first time in the two and a half years I had been on the Executive Committee, the tension suddenly left the room. Even if the outcome of the lawsuit had been different, nothing would have been solved. Members, including me, still would have remained entrenched, absolutely entrenched in winning or losing, and the 60 plus-year organizational impasse would continue.
November 2014, in Buffalo Grove, Illinois (a Chicago suburb), the Executive Committee started listening and talking but mostly listening. With the help of our consultant, Jeffrey Kerr, a process of healing emerged, healing from many injuries on both sides before, during and after the lawsuit. Only then could we consider creating a plan, an imperfect but workable plan that, if reviewed and accepted by the membership, would finally diffuse the anger, helplessness and fear of many members. No one would get everything he or she wanted, but the great majority of members could count on getting most of what they wanted to maintain passionately held views about our profession, our local institutes and centers, and our Association. By last June, the plan emerged, and by January, the plan moved forward.
During this process of implementing the Six Point Plan, there have been the inevitable heated disagreements and temporary regressions to old divisions sometimes online, sometimes on the Executive Committee. However, what is at stake, what can take us seriously forward has ultimately continued to organize thinking and feeling. The Six Point Plan has been tested but the priority has remained the same. What is best for ALL members? What is best for the future of APsaA? What is best for our profession—not yours or mine, but our profession?
By the time we arrive in Chicago in June, most of our challenging efforts will be coming to fruition. The work groups that became task forces to implement the change and draft appropriate bylaw amendments have worked hard to see this process through. Their efforts and plans will be presented in June and voted on by the Executive Council and the Board on Professional Standards.
With the new Department for Psychoanalytic Education, the Institute Requirements and Review Committee, and the transformation of our Executive Council as a true board of directors with final authority to steer APsaA, toward its future, I believe One APsaA will be born.
The already functioning external American Board of Psychoanalysis (ABP) will continue providing certification for those individual members who want this credential. Institutes and centers will decide on their own about the appointment of training analysts and whether certification will be useful or needed in that process.
The American Association for Psychoanalytic Education (AAPE), still in the process of being established as of this writing, will offer accreditation to those institutes that desire standards based on current APsaA standards. APsaA will approve new institutes through the new Institute Requirements and Review Committee using IPA standards as the baseline of standards.
As I mentioned to the journalist, campaigning is about narcissism, charisma, if not inflated self-esteem. It's about imagining you can solve this issue or that issue better than anyone else, that you are better to serve than someone else, or at least you try to convince the group you are better. You make promises you don't necessarily know will be fulfilled once elected. You are trying to provide hope and possibility of real change.
But leading? That's different. Leading is ultimately a humbling experience. Just when you imagine you have it right, you suddenly come to terms with having it wrong. As a psychoanalyst, my best teachers have always been my patients. My best teachers regarding leadership over the past three and a half years have been all of you, the membership. You have all taught me to listen, respond and lead. I remain humbled by your allowing me the opportunity to lead, and will forever be grateful.
And finally my Executive Committee, my “essential others”—Harriet Wolfe, Bill Myerson, Ralph Fishkin, Lee Ascherman, Betsy Brett, Peter Kotcher, and Dean Stein, and more recently Dwarakanath Rao, Dionne
Powell, and Lee Jaffe—your commitment, passion, hard work and solid leadership, will never be forgotten by me or the membership. Seriously—well done, all of you.
Colleagues, thank you all. One APsaA is emerging because of you. See you in Chicago.