Many voices, from within and outside of psychoanalysis, are calling for an awakening, an acknowledgment of and an engagement with issues of race, racism, and other matters of diversity and discrimination. Psychoanalysis has begun to answer the call and recognize its complicity in maintaining the status quo of white supremacy within aspects of its theorizing, organizational structures, and clinical applications. The Department of Psychoanalytic Education (DPE) Diversities Section has dedicated itself to examining how the diversities are addressed, as well as how they might be considered and engaged, in the process of training the next generations of psychoanalysts. Our goal is to assess how institutes incorporate the diversities into psychoanalytic training, both in curriculum and organizational development.
As members of the psychoanalytic community, it is important to commit ourselves to the pursuit of equity, inclusion, and belonging by organizing and disseminating our resources, especially in light of recent social and public health crises. In this spirit, we urge all institutes to contribute to this ongoing project within APsaA by completing the Psychoanalytic Curricula on Diversities Survey and submitting related materials for others to share.
What follows is an abbreviated, preliminary report of in-progress findings
Anton Hart, PhD, FABP, FIPA, training and supervising analyst and faculty at the William Alanson White Institute, is chair of the Diversities Section of APsaA's DPE, and co-chair of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in the American Psychoanalytic Association.
Jordan Dunn, MA, is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at The New School and psychology intern at Mount Sinai-St. Luke's Hospital. He is the outgoing APsaA DPE Diversities Section research assistant, and a student organizer in the sanctuary movement.
Lauren Jones is a senior psychology major at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She currently works as the research assistant for the Diversities Section of the American Psychoanalytic Association's Department of Psychoanalytic Education.
from the Psychoanalytic Curricula on Diversities Survey recently administered by the Diversities Section of APsaA's Department of Psychoanalytic Education. For the survey, which is ongoing, we contacted all APsaA-affiliated institutes and training centers and as many non-APsaA-affiliated institutes and psychoanalytic training centers we could find.
We offer this report in the hope it will be useful to institutes as they embark on their own journeys to address issues of discrimination that psychoanalysts have not been immune to perpetuating. We have assembled our findings, so far, in a table which describes institutes at four levels of development as they incorporate diversities issues.
Using directory listings from APsaA, IPA, and Division 39 affiliate training centers and adding as many non-affiliated institutions as we could identify, we circulated a 21-question survey to the training directors of 105 psychoanalytic institutes, training centers and societies throughout the United States and Canada. Questions focused on an institute's diversities-related curricular offerings, programming, and professional development activities, and scholarships; we also asked what they might need from national organizations like APsaA to further develop their curricula and training to reflect the diversities. We inquired about challenges institutes face as they pursue diversities-oriented initiatives, and their perception of institutional consensus on the “right” amount of diversities-focused educational content.
Our data analysis identifies training centers' patterns in incorporating the diversities into their approaches. Three categories of data emerged: attitudes, practices, and challenges. Attitudes refers to dominant beliefs, and normative values that guide an institute's commitment to engaging with the diversities. Practices refers to actions taken by an institute, including changes to curriculum and programming, approaches to recruitment and retention, ways of sustaining leadership and contributions of non-dominant/minority faculty and trainees. Challenges refers to common organizational obstacles to developing diversities-centered attitudes and practices.
While data collection and analysis are ongoing, we have organized our findings so far into four clusters: 1) Not yet attending to problematic aspects of the status quo; 2) Becoming aware and getting started; 3) Applying awareness and work in progress; 4) Cutting edge-progressive, imaginative thinking, perpetual refinement.
In our table, below, we present these clusters as discrete statuses. It is important to note that we do not consider this model to be linear, or these statuses to be mutually exclusive, as it is typical that any given institute manifests a hybrid of these developmental levels.
| Attitudes: | Practices: | Challenges: | |
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| Not Yet Attending to Problematic Aspects of the Status Quo |
We note that no institute is able to address diversity issues without organizational conflict. Psychoanalytic organizations that begin to take part in dialogues about the diversities become aware that losses are inherently intertwined with gains with each new organizational awakening. If we are to examine all forms of elitism that exist within psychoanalysis, particularly those with roots in patriarchy and white supremacy, we will be able to move toward creating a more just psychoanalytic training process, one that serves and illuminates the struggles and triumphs of people of all races, genders, sexual orientations, physical ability statuses, nationalities, religions, socioeconomic statuses, and social classes.
To check if your institute has completed the survey, please contact Anton Hart, at . Please do not hesitate to be in touch regarding any other questions.
Monocultural norms, policies, and procedures viewed as “standard procedure”
Often denies the existence of diversity issues within the organization
Tolerant of a limited number of “token” people of color and members of other social identity groups only if they possess the “proper” perspective and credentials
Belief that the empathy and attunement one learns through psychoanalytic training makes the superficial study of sociocultural identities unnecessary
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| Becoming Aware and Getting Started |
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| Applying Awareness and Work in Progress |
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| Cutting Edge–Progressive, Imaginative Thinking, Perpetual Refinement |
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