Highlights of the Division Board Meeting

Transitions

The Board of Directors met last week during the APA Annual Convention to discuss, debate, and decide a range of issues facing our organization and psychoanalytic psychology in general. The August Meeting is always a time of transition; and next year’s board will be very different in composition. With the election results in, we will soon be greeting new board members in January, with Frank Summers as President-elect, Lu Steinberg as Treasurer, Norm Abeles, Laura Barbanel, and David Downing as Council Representatives, and Jaine Darwin, Diana Diamond, and Ernesto Mujico as Members-at-Large. In addition, Usha Tummala-Narra was elected by the board to complete the one year remaining on Frank Summers term as Member-at-Large.

While these new (and returning) board members will have our welcome and support, we are losing a number of members who have had years of service on our board, including Judie Alpert, Al Brok, Bart Magee, Dolores Morris, Marsha McCary, and Nina Thomas. It is good to know they will not go far. All of them will continue as committee members, although this loss of experience on the board will be keenly felt. I want to extend my heartfelt appreciation for their contributions to the Division. Finally, we are actually losing another important member, with Larry Zelnick stepping down from the Public Relations Committee after what must be well over ten years in various board and committee positions. Thanks to Larry, who will continue as a member of APA’s Committee on Division and APA Relations (CODAPAR).

APA Elections

One of the more important discussions we have at this meeting every year is to decide whether or not to endorse a candidate for APA President. This year we were faced with a number of candidates whom we know and have worked with over the years, and who asked to attend the board meeting to request our support. We found there were strong reasons to support two of the candidates for president and decide to endorse both. Here is the announcement, which you have probably already seen posted on our e-mail list:

The Board of Directors of the Division of Psychoanalysis has endorsed the candidacies of Douglas Haldeman and Steven Reisner for APA President. The board encourages its members to vote for both candidates as first or second choice on their ballots. (As a reminder, under the Hare System of voting, members are asked to rank order their choices.) Information about Steven Reisner can be found at reisnerforpresident.com; Doug Haldeman’s campaign information is available at http://president.drdoughaldeman.com/

Vote 10 for Division 39

You will be hearing about the above endorsement again when our board members call each of you in a few months requesting your support in the APA apportionment ballot. We very much want your renewed support in our “Vote 10” campaign and we certainly want to win back our 7^th Council seat that we barely lost last year. Although we often are not able to talk to you personally, we on the board very much want not only your support but also your feedback about the Division, its programs and services. If we don’t get to talk to you, please write to let us know how we are doing.

Progress on the Fund for Psychoanalysis

Marsha McCary has been spearheading an important initiative for the Division for over a year: the Fund for Psychoanalysis. She reported that we collected a significant amount of money during our Spring Meeting, our first experience with a fund drive in our history. The Fund has collected in pledges or cash over $88,000. In order to get the Fund operating, we need to have $100,000; and so the board voted to contribute $12,500 to “top out” the Fund.

What this means is that we can now proceed to form a committee that will oversee not only future fundraising but also develop a board to disburse grants from the Fund to support psychoanalytic psychology. As an aside, Marsha reports that in several meetings with APA staff and members over the weekend, the Division was recognized for its success in getting this project off the ground and running fewer than 16 months after its inception. Many other Divisions still struggle to get their funds past the $100,000 “hump” that allows them to actually get started providing grants. Although many have contributed to its success, it has been Marsha’s tireless effort that has gotten us this far. We are already planning another more ambitious fundraiser at the Spring Meeting in Santa Fe, so bring your checkbook!

Support for Early Career Professionals (ECPs)

During the debate last year on the proposed bylaws changes, one of the arguments advanced by those supporting the change was the difficulty many members, especially early career members, face in joining APA. At the Spring Meeting, Jonathan Slavin introduced a number of measures designed to help shore up Division funds and support psychologist’s continued membership in APA. I formed a task force to address these ideas, with Jaine Darwin as chair and Jonathan and Johanna Malone as members. At this meeting, a number of proposals were introduced with the goal of 1) increasing fees for Life Status members, 2) decreasing fees for ECPs attending the Spring Meeting, 3) increased information, support and encouragement for graduate students and ECPs to belong to APA, and 4) establishing a mechanism to provide rebates to ECP members who join APA.

To a great extent, the ideas and proposals developed by the task force have been overtaken by events at the APA level. As it turns out, APA is proposing to its members that APA raise the age when a member may claim Life Member status. In addition, APA has “evened out” the graduated membership fees to ECPs, resulting in a reduction in fees for many ECPs. As a result there will be a need to await the result of the APA bylaws change before changing our Life Member publications fees (our only means of increasing charges to our Life Members, unless we do away with Life Member status altogether, a change that would be possible but certainly feel like a “take away” from our senior members). If the APA bylaws pass, it will be our APA membership that has decided to limit Life Member status to those 69 or older.

The board did agree to reduce ECP fees for attendance at the Spring Meeting. They will now be the same as Graduate Student fees. We agreed that the president will charge the Graduate Student and ECP Committees to develop improved ways to encourage APA membership. The proposal to provide a mechanism for a rebate on APA dues was not supported, however, partly for the reasons described above.

In addition, there was a general consensus that our efforts should go in to finding ways to support ECP attendance at our Spring Meetings. While dissemination of cheaper accommodations, scholarships and other ways to reduce costs are important, one vital way to enhance ECP attendance is to have ECPs represented on panels and discussions, as well as on our board and committees. The ECP Committee has started a mentorship campaign to assist ECPs in writing proposals for the Spring Meeting, which should help increase presence of ECPs on panels. Although we currently have good representation of ECPs on our committees, they continue to fail to win election to the board, despite the fact that many recent candidates had served for years on Division committees. I have asked the Nominations and Elections Committee if we can look at having a separate slate for ECP (and other diversity candidates) with (or preferably without) a bylaws change.

Membership

The news here is short and sweet. Our membership numbers are up, way up, and over 3,000 for the first time in a few years. One caveat to this is that this may be the result of better numbers from APA, as Ruth Helein and Marsha McCary have done yeoman’s service in prodding loose from APA the various ways it accounts (or does not account) for our members. Still we can savor the relatively good news.

Also good news is that one new member of the Membership Committee, Cristiano Santostefano, developed a membership survey that should be in operation in the next month or so. The first survey is an “exit” survey, seeking to learn why some members have failed to renew (and hoping they simply forgot and the survey will serve as a reminder). Once in place, this should give us a way to regularly poll various constituencies of the Division to improve our services and members benefits and to develop a better database of member interests and willingness to work on various committees and projects.

While on the subject, there is an error in the current membership brochure that members should note. In revising the old membership brochure to be sure to include the rebate of Division dues to members joining through APA, somewhere along the way International Affiliates inadvertently were lumped in with Affiliates. While the information on the web site is now correct and the International Affiliates fee is $65, our recent brochure states the charge is $95. Of course anyone who is eligible to join as a Member may do so and pay the full freight, even someone outside the country. This particularly includes our Canadian members who are eligible for full privileges.

Accreditation Council for Psychoanalytic Education (ACPE)

The board had another discussion of ACPE and its budget and progress. Concerning its progress, ACPE continues to accredit psychoanalytic institutes across the country and continues to do so without charge. There has been significant progress since the Spring Meeting in that a number of institutes are now “in the pipeline” applying for accreditation. Since the primary goal of ACPE, however, is to have its standards and procedures recognized by the Department of Education, there is no indication that this will happen within the timeframe set up by ACPE, that is, by the end of this year or soon thereafter. There appear to be increasing bureaucratic roadblocks that may or may not be overcome in time.

The ACPE budget situation is clearer. Our board, along with the three other psychoanalytic organizations that make up the Psychoanalytic Consortium (Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work, and American Psychoanalytic Association), have provided $100,000 payable over 18 months. The Division has contributed $20,000 for 2011 and is obligated to pay the remaining $20,000 in 2012. (Incidentally, the assessment of $40,000 for the Division is based upon our membership numbers, since the Division and the American Psychoanalytic have many more members than the other two groups.) The ACPE budget for 2013 and beyond anticipates two things: 1) ACPE is recognized by the Department of Education as an accrediting body, and 2) institutes applying for accreditation will pay for this service. As a result, there is no anticipation that ACPE will ask the Psychoanalytic Consortium for more funds (although they may ask our members or institutes graduates to donate funds).

What happens if ACPE fails to gain recognition from the government? I don’t know. It could cease or suspend operations and return unspent funds to the Consortium groups. It could carry on as an accrediting body and begin to charge for its services. Since ACPE is autonomous, its decisions will be based on whether it can survive financially and still provide a service to psychoanalysis.

One of the important questions raised during our discussion was the possible benefit of ACPE to our members. The Division has supported the ACPE process for many years and has contributed regularly to keep it in operation. The documents that make up the ACPE standards were largely the result of Division 39 members of the Consortium and it is fair to say that the Division has taken the lead in forging consensus on the Consortium. So in many ways our continued support for ACPE is the result of many years of decisions by our board.

The question of benefit to our members, as opposed to our philosophical commitment, remains important. After all, most of our members are not institute graduates; many of our members are even opposed to the regulation of psychoanalysis implied in institute training and certainly in having government oversight. At the same time, ACPE, if it succeeds, will establish psychoanalysis as a mental health discipline that has clear standards and empirical and institutional support that should benefit all of our members who work from a psychoanalytic perspective, regardless of whether they call themselves psychoanalysts or not. This should help us in defining psychoanalysis to our state legislators who have not have national standards to rely upon in determining whether or not to license psychoanalysis as a separate discipline. It should also help define psychoanalysis as a treatment that typically requires length of time and frequency of contact for optimal benefit against the accusations, frequently advanced, that anything other than super short term treatments are unnecessary, if not unethical.

APA Task Force on Clinical Treatment Guidelines

Last year APA established this task force and many of us, especially Mary Beth Cresci, worked long hours finding nominees for this group and lobbying the Practice Directorate to accept one or more of these nominees, all in the space of a month or so. I think it is a fair characterization to note that when the Practice Directorate wants our help, they are quick to call, but when we ask to be included, suddenly we are small fry indeed. In any event, none of our nominees were selected and the only practitioner selected was Jeffrey Magnavita (and for that we are quite grateful).

Lest we rest upon our indignation, some facts, however unpleasant, need to be considered. It is certainly true that our members and, I suspect, most practicing psychotherapists across the theoretical spectrum, find the idea of specific guidelines for specific disorders to be ill conceived, if not ludicrous. It is not only psychoanalysts who recognize that the person in distress is not an Anxiety Disorder or a Bipolar Disorder, but also someone whose life and being must be addressed in order to alleviate emotional trouble. Knowing this, however, does not stop the juggernaut of managed care and insurance companies who are only too eager to supply their own guidelines. And psychiatry and Big Pharma are only too glad to add their idea that psychotherapy, if needed at all, should only address medication compliance. So our practitioner colleagues, for good or ill, support the idea of having some sort of weapon to defend against assaults on their practice.

The second major issue to keep in mind is that this task force is not charged with writing guidelines but with developing guidelines for the guidelines. Before MEGO sets in just keep in mind that any guidelines will be a long time in coming and there will be ample time for our members to comment and object to the specifics. While the bureaucracy of APA can feel stifling at times, it does mean that the guidelines that result will be sufficiently general as to accommodate psychoanalytic and other forms of treatment. Who knows? Perhaps by then APA will have come to recognize that psychoanalysis is as evidence based and empirically valid (or whatever new phrase comes along in the meantime) as CBT, EFT, or LSMFT.

CODAPAR Grants

Time for another lesson learned about APA: CODAPAR is an acronym for Committee on Division and APA Relations. This group has limited funds to support interdivisional grants that typically initiate some sort of change process in APA policy or governance. This year Shara Sand, co-chair of Sexualities and Gender Identities Committee helped spearhead a grant, with Division 44 and other sponsoring Divisions to form a task force on treatment of transgendered individuals. This is an important way for our Division to build up areas of trust and collaboration with other Divisions. The group was awarded $6650 to complete its task in 2014

Committee on International Relations in Psychoanalytic Psychology (CIRPP)

Marilyn Jacobs requested and the board approved forming a new standing committee that will have as its mission increase in international presence at our Spring Meetings, in our publications and in our membership, as well as liaison with APA’s Committee on International Relations in Psychology. This committee has also applied for a CODAPAR grant in collaboration with Division 45 (Ethnic Minority Issues) and Division 52 (International Psychology) to address need for increased diversity within psychoanalysis.

New Committee Chairs and Members

The following members have been appointed (or will be appointed for 2012) to various committees:

• Membership: We have a new co-chair, Johanna Malone and new members, Daphny Ainslie, Cristiano Santostefano, Anthony Tasso.
• Nominations and Elections: Nancy McWilliams and Tamara McClintock Greenberg are reappointed for another year with Mary Beth Cresci continuing as chair.
• Awards: Mary-Joan Gerson is the new chair. Jill Bresler, David Lichtenstein and Elliot Jurist are new members. Thanks to Maureen who will serve as a member for one more year.
• Candidate: Ricardo Rieppi is the new co-chair of this committee.
• Continuing Education: Colin Ennis is the new chair for this Committee; thanks to Laura Porter who will remain on the committee to assist Colin during this transition.
• Early Career Professional: Heather-Ayn Indelicato is the new co-chair with thanks to Winnie Eng who will remain a member. Joining the committee is Daphny Ainslie, Colin Ennis. Karen Dias, Corry Gerritson, and Almas Merchant.
• Education and Training: Almas Merchant and Emily Jones are new student members.
• Graduate Students: Jonathan and Tanya Cotler are stepping down from this committee. New Co-chair is Brian Brown. New members are Emily Loscalzo and Jenna Rosen.
• Public Relations: Ankhesenamun Ball is the new co-chair; Joseph Reynoso is a new member. Larry Zelnick is stepping down.
• Research: Sherwood Waldron is the new chair, with Diana Diamond, Bill Gottdiener (Liaison, Section VI), Jim Hansell. Peter Haugen (ECP), Johanna Malone (Student), Cheri Marmoresh, Karl Stukenberg and Paul Wachtel
• Sexualities and Gender Identities: Shara Sand is the new co-chair. Scott Maguire is stepping down. New members are Brian Brown (Student), Karen Dias, and Rhonda Factor.
• International Relations: Marilyn Jacobs and Ken Reich co-chair, with Neil Altman, Richard Ruth, Marilyn Metzl, Rukhsana M. Chaudhry, Jenny Heller, Anurag Mishra, and Andrew Samuels.

Conclusion

That’s about it for a summary of our meeting. The Council Representatives will provide you with a more detailed report on the working of APA Council at the Convention. I will take a few more minutes of your time to describe a panel I attended at the Convention. It was the scheduled for 12 Noon on Sunday, not a “prime time” for sessions, but before the session began the room was packed with numerous standees. The panel was chaired by Jeffrey Magnavita and the presenters were Lorna Benjamin, Laura Brown and Nancy McWilliams, with a discussion by Nadine Kaslow. The presenters’ task was to show a short video clip of clinical work and to discuss their theoretical and clinical assumptions that guide their work, especially in reference to the video vignette.

As a “plug,” this was the first opportunity to view even a small part of the video that APA has recently published with Nancy McWilliams, Les Greenberg and Judith Beck interviewing two separate clients over two sessions. (Shorthand description: The “Gloria” tapes redone, this time with a psychoanalyst) And Nancy’s video clip was a vivid demonstration of both empathy and critical distance in allowing the client to express and experience walled-off grief over his father’s death. I highly recommend the videos: Three Approaches to Psychotherapy With a Female Client and its companion, Three Approaches to Psychotherapy With a Male Client.

But back to the panel. I found my self impressed overall with the work presented and the coherence of their theoretical approach and rationale for the interventions offered. I could but choose not to resist that the theoretical stances offered were largely completely compatible with psychoanalytic perspective. Jeffrey Magnavita emphasized the intergenerational transmission of abuse in working with a woman concerned about being too hard on her child only to “open up” to explore her own history of abuse. Lorna Benjamin emphasized the “positive” side of self-destructive behavior and the need for clients to understand that their seemingly irrational actions were in one sense a “gift of love” to a parent who both abused and in some ways seduced the child, so that reaching out to new and healthy relationships and patterns of behaving are actually threatening. Laura Brown addressed the issue of empowerment, and how women fail to recognize and claim their own power, and this in working with a client who explicitly disclaimed any interest in being powerful and instead wanted the therapist to “tell her what to do.”

As I partly described above, Nancy’s client gradually began to link his increased anxiety over the past months with concerns about his daughter’s immanent departure for college. This in turn allowed him to explore the impact of his father’s death when he was just a boy and how walled off he has been from his feelings all his life. Finally, Nancy made an observation that his “caretaking” and need to please as a way of warding off pain extended into the session and his readiness to help her feel like the “good therapist.” During his short emotional breakdown as his felt the grief of his father’s loss, Nancy sat more or less in attentive silence and ended with a construction of the events during the session that paid attention not only to his evident pain, but also his characterological stance (and strength) of transforming pain into reflection and intellectualization.

So here is my point, obviously a biased one, but with each of the other therapists I felt the heavy hand of theory guiding and directing the clients in far more overt ways than I saw in Nancy’s work. It seemed to me that each had a clear (and certainly useful) lens through which they saw the client. My conclusion is that in some ways good psychoanalytic therapy is actually less theory-driven, less focused on tying up loose ends, than the other approaches I observed. All the presenters offered up a version of themselves, in their theory, in their openness to the clients, and in their understanding of change and health. All of these attributes, the attributes of good therapy, are obscured by the tiresome battle of “evidence based” treatments and the hoops various therapists go through to demonstrate that their work is scientific. I am pleased that Jeffrey Magnavita is on the APA Task Force for Treatment Guidelines, but I despair for our field until and unless research meets clinical practice (and vice-versa) to have a real conversation about how to help real patients with real problems.

And Beyond

I want to read your comments and suggestions. I very much want you to attend our next meeting in Santa Fe. Register early and often for excellent savings and come to Santa Fe to participate not only in learning but in discussing our craft, our future, and our need for connection.

Psychiatry and Big Pharma: Waiting for the Perp Walk to Begin

Much heat has been expended debating the relative merits of psychoanalytic work versus other approaches, especially CBT. While research and theory is of undoubted importance in better defining quality and success in psychotherapy, the more enduring threat to independent practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy does not come from CBT practitioners, or even CBT researchers, however dearly we may resent their current hegemony in academia. I submit it that any successful practicing clinician, regardless of orientation, works with resistance, transference, unconscious processes, dissociated affect, repressed memories, as well as habits, symptoms, cognitive distortions and so on, regardless of what labels describe these concepts. Working psychotherapists often have far more in common in their understanding and approach than research would suggest.

For the average clinician struggling to survive financially in the marketplace, the issues they face are quite different than deciding the relative efficacy of EFPP, DBT, EMDR, LTPP or any of the many “brands” of psychotherapy. The first barrier for all psychotherapists is the o’erweening influence of Big Pharma promoting the unthinking assumption on the part of the general public that emotional problems are best treated with medications. The second barrier is the pernicious ascendance of managed care restrictions on treatment with its wholesale insistence on defining mental health as a service treating only the “severely mentally ill” with medications and, perhaps, ultra short-term therapy.  The result of this emphasis has been to provide incentives to overpathologize our patients (to obtain reimbursements) and to underplay our commitment to meaning and truth in working with our patients (to appear compliant with reviewers). The false assumption that CBT treatment is super-fast provides the cover for managed care to continually ratchet down care and results in a false competition among psychotherapists in a perverse version of “Name that Tune:” “I can treat that person in three sessions!”

These two obstacles to psychotherapy practice have a common root in the decision of the psychiatric profession to become “respectable” (and prosperous) by insisting that all psychological and emotional ills are merely manifestations of physical disorders, brain malfunction, misfiring neurotransmitters, etc., that can be treated scientifically without recourse to such ephemera as the patient’s life struggles, his failed social support systems, her resilience and motivation to change, and so on. The manifest failure of psychiatry to succeed in this endeavor to become a “real” science of brain disorders has had little or no impact on its undoubted success in transforming mental health treatment into drug treatment as first, last and only approach.

It was not always thus. It is not so very long ago psychiatry and psychiatric diagnosis was under withering attack by many, from Thomas Szasz, to R.D. Laing, to Michel Foucault, who from varying perspectives condemned psychiatric diagnosis as nothing more than either moralizing about behaviors we disliked, labeling nonconforming individuals as “sick” (rather than annoying), or injecting the power of the state to regulate intimate and personal aspects of our lives, and so on. In movies (King of Hearts), novels (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and Broadway musicals (Anyone Can Whistle), the notion that there was any significant difference between the sane and the insane was pilloried. Perhaps the high water mark was the decision of the American Psychiatric Association in 1974 to strike out homosexuality as a mental illness. For the first time, an established mental illness was voted out of existence! Who knew such a thing could happen?  But whatever happened, it did not last long and soon psychiatry was riding high, higher than ever before.

Psychiatry’s success came about through its alliance with a pharmaceutical industry ever eager to expand the use of its drugs in treating as wide a variety of illnesses as possible. Drugs developed to treat physical illness proved remarkably adaptable in addressing psychiatric ills. With the development of the DSM, especially its recent incarnations, psychiatry was able to gain a monopoly over diagnosis of mental problems, insulating itself from the rising tide of other mental health professions that emerged in the 60s and 70s, imposing upon those professions a concept of mental health and illness that was alien to their traditions (however eager they were to use the DSM to obtain insurance reimbursement!). The date of introduction of Prozac (1987) is perhaps the best marker for the consolidating alliance with Big Pharma. This was also a boon to managed care as it developed, allowing insurance companies to play the two-pronged game of sequestering off mental health care as “behavioral treatment” but rarely paying unless treatment included medication as well for a presumed brain disorder.

So maybe Pogo was wrong and there really is an enemy other than “us” that has been able to convince the public, policymakers and the great mass of physicians that emotional difficulties, drug addiction, marital conflicts, etc., are nothing more that examples of “drug deficiency” easily enough treated with the right kind and combination of medications. The fact that psychotherapy works, that psychotherapy not only addresses symptoms but also provides for increased quality of living, has been obscured by the successful alliance of psychiatry with the pharmaceutical industry. The fact that the so-called brain disorders remain undiscovered has not flagged both the researchers and the public’s enthusiasm for the “next big thing.”

While waiting for the day when the incestuous relationship between professional psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry finally stirs the legal system to substantive action, we can take solace in the recent revelations that Harvard University[1] has imposed sanctions on the eminent child psychiatrist Joseph Biederman and two colleagues. As reported in the Boston Globe[2], the three psychiatrists admitted to unspecified violations of institutional policies and are barred from receiving remuneration for any industry-sponsored activity for one year and will remain “under review” for another two years. Although Biederman’s links to Big Pharma have been know for years and prompted a public dressing-down before a congressional committee in 2008 by Sen. Charles Grassley, this is the most significant consequence he has had to endure to date.

This revelation was particularly gratifying to me because I had suffered three days of indoctrination at a Harvard workshop years ago on the benefits of drug treatment for children and adolescents. In addition to such compelling encouragement offered by Dr. Biederman to simply ignore the “black box” warnings on use of stimulants and antidepressants, there was an appalling paucity of thoughtfulness throughout the sessions. Speakers referred almost solely to the symptom lists offered by the DSM-IV in determining diagnoses, sadly shaking their heads at times as they noted the alarming rise of psychiatric illness among children and adolescents, and asking for our commiseration with their “discovery” of an equally astonishing rise in comorbidity. Every speaker described drugs as the main form of treatment with occasional nods to CBT and “family work” as having some benefit. The speaker discussing eating disorders ruefully noted that neither drugs nor CBT have been found effective in treating anorexia and bulimia and that long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy, while effective, was not offered due to limitations imposed by managed care.

The fact that researchers at one of the most prestigious university and teaching hospital in the country would spout such unrelieved nonsense was profoundly depressing. My discovery that many of these same researchers had their hands in the till of the pharmaceutical industry to the tune of million of dollars came later; and I have patiently waited for these revelations to merit more than New York Times editorials and congressional scoldings. I have eagerly hoped that the “perp walk” would begin and fervently desired that Dr. Biederman would be among the first. Imagine my dismay that the actions that have been taken in this case is that he and his colleagues have gotten little more than a wrist slap, with their institution rallying round them and intoning piously that violations of conflict-of-interest rules will henceforth be strictly enforced . . in the future.[3]

There has been a lot of information out there in the last ten years or so concerning the absolute corrupting relationship between organized psychiatry and Big Pharma. It is commonplace to observe that universities want to keep psychiatric researchers happy; drug companies want successful outcomes for their research trials, and pharmaceutical representatives would be happy to announce that Prozac (or Abilify, or Seroquel) have also been found to cure Asperger’s, Alzheimer’s or Alcoholism on the basis of solid anecdotal evidence. And in may ways it is hardly surprising that institutions tend to rally round their own in the face of criticism, and money talks and power corrupts, and on and on. What has been less well publicized is the utter vacuity of thought within psychiatry to the point that the bizarre notion of “chemical imbalance” as cause for depression (and everything else) and the prospect that almost everyone suffers from some sort of mental illness has become a substitute for any reasoned exploration of what ails our patients and ourselves. Public credulity has been a reliable ally in the promotion of one psychiatric syndrome into prominence for a few years before giving place to the “next new thing,” such that ADHD is far less fashionable to have than the newly minted Asperger’s Syndrome. And it is de rigueur for bipolar disorders to have just a little psychotic disorder on the side.

In a series of articles recently published in the New York Review of Books, Marcia Angell reviews the state of mental illness in this country and the overwhelming involvement of the pharmaceutical industry allied with psychiatry to discover ever-new forms of mental illness in conjunction with ever-new drug treatments. In the first article[4] she describes the astonishing rise in diagnosis of mental illness over the last twenty years and links this increase to the widespread availability of medications designed to treat these problems beginning 50 years ago with the introduction of Thorazine, but taking off 30 years ago as “new” antidepressants, anti-psychotics and so on, came on the market. Drugs that were found to partially alleviate symptoms of depression and psychosis have led to the largely unquestioned assertion that drugs that affect serotonin and dopamine levels in the brain are only correcting a “chemical imbalance” that was the cause of the disorder in the first place, although by this logic headaches are caused by aspirin deficiency!

She reviews the work of Irving Kirsch[5] in detailing the failure of researchers to find the elusive “chemical imbalance” after many attempts and the increasing discovery that the effects of antidepressant medication are largely due to placebo effects. This remarkable discovery has been increasingly replicated in double blind studies. These studies have found that the beneficial effects of antidepressant medication, while statistically significant, are not clinically any better than those achieved by use of placebos. Moreover, when the placebo used in drug research mimics the same side effects of antidepressants, the differences in effectiveness trend toward zero.

While one possible implication of these studies is a kind of “no harm, no foul” outcome (after all, if patients report improvements, what’s the problem?), Robert Whitaker explores the darker side of the use of psychoactive medications. In Anatomy of an Illness[6], Whitaker notes that the long-term use of these medications does have significant, long-term and deleterious effects, including shrinkage of the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that we would sort of like to retain for as long as possible. While psychiatric science has failed to find the chemical imbalance that causes mental illness, Whitaker points out that psychoactive drugs to indeed cause “chemical imbalance” as the body tries to adjust to these medications, sometimes to three or four medications, each one “chasing” the side effects of the others. So, the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder gives way in time to the emergence of Bipolar Disorder with solemn assurance that it was “there” all along, without any consideration that stimulants impact sleep (especially when used “as needed”) and that disturbed sleep tends to lead to depression and anger, merging imperceptibly into bipolar illness..

In the second article[7], Angell focuses on the development of the DSM in it’s various iterations and the ongoing revision that threatens to vastly increase the number of psychiatric conditions available, expanding the reach of diagnoses to include such categories as “psychotic risk syndrome,” and with a range of “spectrum” disorders to allow diagnosis below the threshold of actual symptoms. Children may be discovered to have “temper dysregulation disorder” in the new DSM-V, presumably allowing all children to be found to suffer from mental illness.

Angell addresses the perverse incentive parents, especially poor parents, face when financial benefits flow from having a child with a mental illness and therefore eligible to receive SSI benefits, including Medicaid. Curiously, she does not address the perquisites of diagnosis that benefit the middle and upper classes, so that a child with ADHD may be assured to “accommodations” well into college and beyond. Additionally, she does not address the financial benefits to psychiatrists in being able to diagnose, and be reimbursed for, an expanding list of new disorders. After all, the DSM was originally developed as a way for psychiatrists to justify insurance reimbursement and the success of the first DSM has not been lost on generations of psychiatrists. Daniel Carlat[8] exemplifies the psychiatric profession, with its own perverse incentives to see patients for 15-20 minutes, prescribing solely on the basis of symptoms and reported symptom relief, all of which allows him to make at least twice as much as a psychotherapist.

Angell comes to a final conclusion,

The books by Irving Kirsch, Robert Whitaker and Daniel Carlat are powerful indictments of the way psychiatry is now practiced . . At the very least, we need to stop thinking of psychoactive drugs as the best, and often the only, treatment for mental illness or emotional distress. Both psychotherapy and exercise have been shown to be as effective as drugs for depression, and their effects are longer lasting, but unfortunately, there is no industry to push these alternatives and Americans have come to believe that pills must be more potent.

Her conclusions seem woefully incomplete and there is a great deal more to be said about those treatments and interventions, including psychoanalytic psychotherapy, that work and have sustained and enduring benefits. While this was not the purpose of her review, it remains an important task for us all educate the public. For at least the last 30 years, the pharmaceutical industry has been on an unremitting and largely successful campaign to convince Americans that their depression, anxiety, blue moods, and shyness are illnesses that can be alleviated with a simple pill. The realities that Angell reviews (and Kirsch and Whitaker have documented), will not have any impact on the public without a sustained campaign to educate Americans to the shortcomings and dangers of drug treatments and the benefits of alternatives.

We can and must do better to address this unholy alliance of psychiatry, Big Pharma, and managed care. It is not sufficient that we know that drug treatment for emotional problems, however useful in the short term, does not address the underlying problems of living that our patients struggle with. The reality is that drug companies and the insurance industry have far greater clout with policymakers and far greater resources to indoctrinate the public (and truth be told, Americans have always sought the “quick fix” in many areas) than any of our organizations. Even combined we cannot compete on a level playing field; but we can begin to address what is essentially an illusion that medication cures emotional distress and that psychotherapy in whatever iteration is essentially an adjunctive approach to ensure patient compliance with medications.

One of the goals of Division 39 has been for our Council Representatives to forge closer connections with the other practice divisions and our new Committee for Professional Affairs will also have collaboration with the Practice Directorate as well as the practice divisions as a major goal.  Finally, the Psychoanalytic Consortium has agreed to address the issue of public relations for psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy at every meeting. Psychotherapists of whatever orientation need to stand together to protect a patient’s right to choice, privacy, access, and quality in mental health and substance abuse care. Make you voice heard within Division 39 and APA by attending the APA Annual Convention in August and learning more about ways to promote and protect psychoanalytic psychology as theory, research paradigm and, especially, treatment.

                       
 
                        

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[1] This newspaper article came to me from Kenneth S. Pope’s e-mail list kspope.com. Thanks to Ken Pope for distributing such a wide range of information relevant to psychology and psychotherapy.

[2] http://articles.boston.com/2011-07-02/lifestyle/29731040_1_harvard-doctors-harvard-medical-school-physicians

[3] In fairness, psychiatry is not alone in being in bed with Big Pharma and, as documented by the investigative organization, Pro Publica, universities have routinely failed to enforce their own conflict of interest policies and have only been goaded into doing so by investigations such as Pro Publica’s. See http://www.propublica.org/article/medical-schools-plug-holes-in-conflict-of-interest-policies and thanks again to Ken Pope for bringing this to our attention.

[4] Marcia, A (June 23, 2011). The epidemic of mental illness, New York review of books, available online at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/23/epidemic-mental-illness-why/?pagination=false

[5] Kirsch, I. (2010). The emperor’s new drugs: Exploding the antidepressant myth, New York: Basic Books.

[6] Whitaker, R. (2010). Anatomy of an epidemic: Magic bullets, psychiatric drugs, and the astonishing rise of mental illness in America, New York: Crown.

[7] and Marcia, A. (July 14, 2011). The illusions of psychiatry, New York Review of Books, available at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jul/14/illusions-of-psychiatry/

[8] Carlat, D. (2011). Unhinged: The trouble with psychiatry—A doctor’s revelations about a profession in crisis, New York: Free Press.

The Report of My Death: A Short Course in American Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis has been pronounced dead more times than Francisco Franco. “The mental illness it purports to cure,” in Karl Krauss’s infelicitous definition, has been variously lampooned as ludicrous or condemned as the cause of all our 20^th century’s maladies. Frederick Crews was able to trash psychoanalysis as equally responsible for covering up the reality of child abuse as well as causing the false memory scandals of the 1980s. A neat trick all told.

For all its repeated obituaries, replete with Time cover stories, psychoanalysis has waxed and waned in the popular imagination, as well as in scientific circles, throughout the old century and now into the new. Its death has been lamented and celebrated as its return to life has been touted and scorned, yet psychoanalysis never lets go, at least completely, its hold on our imagination, our conceptions of man and society, and our efforts at healing human ills.

In this article I want to offer my own, slightly potted, ideas about how and why psychoanalysis has (and has not) thrived in the last 60 or so years. I contend that the time when psychoanalysis has been most respected and respectable was also paradoxically the time of its greatest crisis and intellectual decline. As psychoanalytic theory and practice have come under increased attack (or more to the point, scorn), our theories, practices, and science have become increasingly vibrant, life affirming and challenging to our culture and society.

It has long been a commonplace that psychoanalysis thrived in this country in the 1950s, when it was seen as the only game in town for the treatment of the severely mentally ill as well as the Park Avenue doyennes beloved by New Yorker cartoonists. It is certainly true that psychoanalysis achieved a largely unchallenged prestige in medical schools and throughout all of psychiatry. Securing a niche as a training analyst at a prestigious American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) institute more or less guaranteed a comfortable income and enviable social propriety.

For many of us, however, this era does not shine so brightly in memory. While the tendency to cast past paragons into exterior darkness is an endemic defect in the psychoanalytic character, there is some truth in the proposition that American psychoanalysis had to be rescued from itself. The slough of despond within our profession has been ably documented by Douglas Kirschner in Free Associations and perceptively described by Jacqueline Rose in On Not Being Able to Sleep. The shabby treatment of psychoanalyst émigrés, including Annie Reich and Otto Fenichel, has been reported by Russell Jacoby in The Political Freudians. Psychoanalysis in this country was, with rare exceptions, an all-male bastion of physician privilege. While there were many “islands” of psychoanalytic heresiarchs, from Menninger’s to William Alanson White, official psychoanalysis was overwhelmingly conformist and self-satisfied with its accomplishments. It is certainly not true that every ambitious woman was told she suffered from penis envy or that every gay male was told he had he suffered from a mental (albeit curable) disorder; but it is “true enough” that the psychoanalytic paradigm did not include the possibility that these constructions themselves were subject to analysis. It is certainly true that an adolescent boy’s report of masturbating, recounted in the Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, was described as “soiling;” and his wearing jeans and sporting long hair was interpreted as examples of disturbingly regressive acting out. You could look it up!

The intellectual ferment within psychoanalysis could not remain long muted and the work of reviving psychoanalytic theory and practice can be ascribed to many, although any list would have to include Heinz Kohut, Stephen Mitchell, and Jessica Benjamin. More important, I think, was the “entrance” on the scene of the interpersonalists, Kleinians and Middle Group thinkers that had been largely marginalized in the 1950s and 1960s. Equally important, are those ideas and individuals from outside psychoanalysis, beginning with feminist critics of psychoanalysis, through the Stone Center writers, and eventually to queer theory thinkers and others who brought to psychoanalysis passion, anger, and provocative determination to make psychoanalysis rethink itself.

While the Division can claim only a distant glory in honoring the emergence of self psychology, relational psychoanalysis, etc., it can certainly take considerable credit for opening a space for new ideas and approaches within psychoanalysis. By its self-creation over 30 years ago, the Division claimed the right to speak for psychoanalytic psychology both within and without APA, as well as carrying out Freud’s goal of recognizing that medical training was the least desirable route to becoming a psychoanalyst and that psychoanalytic thought was a sub-discipline of psychology, not medicine. By initiating and supporting the GAPPP lawsuit against APsaA (resulting in opening up their institutes to offer training to non-physicians on a basis of equality), the Division radically altered the psychoanalytic landscape. By initiating the diplomate in psychoanalysis (ABPsaP), the Division established the only current independent organization for the certification of psychoanalysts. By working with other psychoanalytic organizations, the Division also helped establish the Accreditation Council for Psychoanalytic Education (ACPE) as an independent accrediting body for psychoanalytic education.

I think it is important to emphasize, then, that psychoanalysis in America underwent a sea change in the 1980s and 1990s, revitalized by new (and some not so new) ideas about theory, technique, and the notion of change and cure, as well as the establishment of new (and some not so new) education opportunities for psychologists. Of course, this was the very same era when psychoanalysis came under increasing attack within the “talk therapy” movement, as more and more treatment approaches encroached on the claims of psychoanalysis, while psychiatry refashioned itself, with a little help from their pharmaceutical company friends, as the new “pill doctors,” dispensing relief from what ails you without all that messy business of actually changing, thinking, or having to talk to a human being.  DBT and Prozac, CBT and Risperdal, held out the promise that change could come quickly and cheaply (and, eventually, delivered by “highly trained” paraprofessionals), whereas psychoanalysis came to be viewed as out of touch with both science and the culture.

To continue with our theme of the death of psychoanalysis, in this new century the increasing accusation against our work (and indeed the work of any who espouse some variant of relational psychotherapy) has been that we fail to meet the scientific sniff test. With the rise of increasingly sophisticated research paradigms and the ideological triumph of Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) and manualized treatment protocols as the “gold standard” for determining efficacy of treatments, the “evidence-based” mantra, curiously emerging at the same time as corporate takeover of mental health care, has promised to cast into shade any treatment that is not symptom-specific, culturally sensitive, and, of course, quick and inexpensive. In the last year or so, the emergence of the Association for Psychological Science, with its attempts to supplant APA’s role in credentialing clinical psychology programs, has clearly been a knife blade aimed at discrediting our work and casting derision on our craft by comparing it to “dolphin-assisted therapy” or worse.

But psychoanalysis has not died. In fact, many researchers have taken up the challenge and produced more and compelling evidence that psychoanalytic treatments work, that they work for diverse populations, that they work for disparate symptoms/diagnoses, and so on. There remains much ill will on both sides of the clinician-researcher divide; but there is increasing evidence that we not only need one another but may actually like one another. APsaA has been hugely supportive of researchers in recent years and some increasingly powerful psychoanalytic research organizations have emerged.  While the Division still has a way to go in this area, we have formed a Research Committee with the goal of keeping psychological research at the core of our publications, programs and educational efforts.

So, once again, has psychoanalysis been resuscitated? I would argue that it has and that the opportunities to learn psychoanalysis have been greatly expanded, the ability to think critically and broadly about our work has been increasingly accepted, our ability to work with diverse populations has increased, and the value of our work has been effectively demonstrated in multiple ways. Certainly much needs to be done and we must work harder than ever to have our profession look increasingly like our society with its diversity in ethnicity, sexually identity and culture. And we ain’t getting any younger, either.

So what are our challenges? There is one major challenge: we need more people in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. To accomplish this we need to figure out how therapists can be paid for their work at a level commensurate with their education and training. To accomplish this, we need other professionals, policymakers and the general public to learn about the value, efficacy, and indeed the efficiency of psychoanalytic work.

This is work for all of us, but the Division has a new Committee on Public Relations and Psychoanalysis (please check out their information on our web site) and the Psychoanalytic Consortium has agreed to make public relations/public information a common agenda we will address in the next few years to determine ways we can work together to inform the public of our work.

What can you do? Each of us can take on the job of educating the public about psychoanalysis. While writing critiques of articles that propound incorrect information about psychoanalysis may help, a more proactive stand is to inform the public what psychoanalysis is. A member of our Division, Ruth Neubauer, has been involved for a number of years in teaching psychoanalytic ideas (using Judith Viorst’s book, Necessary Losses, among other things) in adult education seminars. Many members have web sites where they could post short articles on psychoanalytic understanding of diverse topics. A number of our members blog on Psychology Today and other sites, including our InSight editor Tamara McClintock Greenberg, and identify themselves as psychoanalysts or psychoanalytic therapists. We need to build strong psychoanalytic communities through our institutes and local chapters in order to support and mentor younger colleagues, as well as participate in our national organization, its Sections and committees.

It is unfortunately true that Freud never said to Carl Jung, as they arrived in America in 1909, “We bring them the plague.” It could more accurately be said, however, that it was psychoanalysis that caught the plague from America’s “mental illness” of conformism, consumerism, and philistinism. The early success of psychoanalysis in this country was at least partly due to a misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of psychoanalytic thought. Perhaps psychoanalysis has now cured itself of the American plague, but it will take some hard work to truly bring them the plague  . .  and its cure.

Make Division39.org Your Home Page

 In case you haven’t noticed, our Division 39 web site, http://www.division39.org/[1] has changed and we are hosted within the APA site, one of the first Divisions selected to be included in the newly refurbished APA.org. Why don’t you click on the link first and then come back to this introduction.

Are you back? Great. I want to review with you what this new site means to our members, our colleagues interested in psychoanalytic psychology, and to the general public. I will also address some of the important reasons for, and implications of, allowing APA to host our web site. I want to emphasize that the web site remains “ours,” under the direction of our Publications Committee and led by our Internet Editor, Barry Cohen. Any additions, corrections, and revisions of the site are under our direction.

As you may know, the Division leadership has been concerned for a number of years about the utility and usefulness of our web site. The original architecture of the site, developed about six years ago, allowed us to do many things we were previously unable to do. Our need for the web site, however, swiftly outpaced its capabilities. During this time, Larry Zelnick performed yeoman’s labor in keeping the site updated (on a yeoman’s budget at that!). He added, for example, capability to register for the Spring Meeting, to download the program booklet, but also to submit panel and paper proposals online to present at the Spring Meeting. This latter addition is a “first,” as no other Division has been offered APA services to accept conference proposals. While we were aware for years that we could not continue on a shoestring budget, it was only in the last year or so that the Division Board requested a complete overhaul of the web site.

The Internet Task Force completed its mission in August 2011 and two important recommendations were adopted 1) to place the web site under the responsibility of the Publications Committee; and 2) to search for an Internet Editor who would oversee the re-development of the site. The general recommendation of the task force was to make the web site another publication of the Division, that is, to contain updated information important to our members, our colleagues, and the public on a regular basis. (During the recent bylaws balloting, our members approved this restructuring by an overwhelming margin.) For members who do not know about web sites, there are two major costs: 1) the design of the site; and 2) the placement of the site on the Internet so that it is easily accessible. Although web sites can be set up quite inexpensively, their usefulness is accordingly limited. The Task Force concluded that an initial investment of $25,000 would be necessary to redo the site, with far more costs to come.

Imagine our surprise when Larry Zelnick, in his new role as member of Committee on Division-APA Relations (CODAPAR), learned of an opportunity for Divisions to join their web sites to the new APA site. Larry quickly got our Division to the “front of the line.” As a result, there will be no cost to the Division for any use of the APA site to host virtually unlimited information about the Division and about psychoanalytic psychology. No cost! There are a few things APA will not do, such as manage a separate directory or allow online financial transactions (such as new member applications); but that’s it.

Excited? There is more to come. In the next few months, APA will be able to offer additional services, spaces on the web site for committees, privately or publicly, for example, to discuss their work and goals. Individual members will also be able to post information. More on that later.

And as the game show host exclaims, “That’s not all, folks!” By hosting our Division on the APA site, we not only have access to tremendous resources of APA, but our site will now be easily accessible to anyone visiting APA’s site. Any APA member, but also any member of the public, as they search for information, will be able to access information about psychoanalytic psychology. You may or may not know that the APA site is heavily used by the public for information about mental illness, emotional problems, and so on. What this means is that when a member of the public types in “depression” on APA Search, we now have the opportunity to get information about psychoanalytic perspectives on depression to the public.

While there are significant advantages in having APA host our site, it is important to note that the Division remains fully independent in terms of content. The information on the site is the responsibility of the Publications Committee under Henry Seiden and will be managed by our Internet Editor, Barry Cohen, both of whom worked tirelessly with Larry Zelnick to get the site up and running for the last few months.

Now, I hope all that is exciting, but it will not be all that exciting if we do not have interesting, informative, and challenging content. This is an opportunity to better communicate with our members, but that depends upon YOU: committee chairs, section representatives, local chapter presidents, and newsletter editors. These Division/Section/Chapter leaders need to get their information onto the site in order to keep the site updated and lively. We also need information about psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy that is relevant and up to date. We need information about our members’ outreach and social responsibility efforts to keep Division 39 “in the news.” So who contributes to the success of the web site: YOU DO.

Our Internet Editor, Barry Cohen, who will work to keep the web site as up to date and interesting as possible. Please contact him with your ideas, suggestions and, if needed, corrections (it’s a big site and errors may creep in from time to time). And finally, make Division 39 your new home page!

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[1] Actually, the URL is http://www.apadivisions.org/division-39/ but you can continue to use our old URL. It works just fine.

Division 39 and the Psychoanalytic Consortium

 During the recent debate concerning the proposed bylaws amendments, the focus of the discussion centered on the Division’s relationship with psychology and the American Psychological Association. It is true that our bylaws strongly address our Division’s unique focus on psychoanalysis as a vital and legitimate area of psychological study and practice. It is important that our organization remain committed to psychoanalytic research, scholarship and practice as an important part of our identity as a psychological organization.

At the same time, our organization is committed to psychoanalytic teaching and education and has taken its place among the major psychoanalytic organizations in this country. For18 years the Division of Psychoanalysis has been part of the Psychoanalytic Consortium made up of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry (AAPDP), and the National Membership Committee on Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work (now renamed, American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work [AAPCSW]) in addition to the Division.

Accreditation and Psychoanalytic Institutes

It may come as a surprise that psychoanalytic institutes in this country have never had a recognized set of standards or a means to accredit institutes as being able to adequately teach psychoanalytic practice. Further reflection may easily suggest why. Institutes in this country were often formed by those breaking away from other institutes in order to teach their view of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic practice. Although APsaA has maintained some control over its separate institutes, this has been entirely an “in house” matter. During the early years, especially with the dominance of medical psychoanalysis, there was little thought that institutes might need to demonstrate the value or validity of their teaching.

This admittedly anarchic approach to accrediting institutes began to shift as psychoanalytic institutes and organizations faced the declining prestige of psychoanalytic training, the increased challenges to psychoanalytic treatment, and the embarrassing diversity of psychoanalytic training and practice. In response to these perceived challenges APsaA initiated an effort to seek recognition as the only organization able to accredit institutes. The National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP) countered with similar efforts to establish training standards that would be recognized by the Department of Education (DoE). One outcome of both NAAP’s and APsaA’s efforts led to the formation of the Consortium and the attempt to develop a common set of standards among the four constituent organizations of the Consortium.

Emergence of Accreditation Council for Psychoanalytic Education

The Consortium was able to develop a set of common standards and to enlist the agreement of the major organizations that this document could become a common standard for psychoanalytic education in 2001. At that point, a new organization was formed, the Accreditation Council for Psychoanalytic Education (ACPE), which was empowered to seek approval of the DoE and to accredit any institutes that applied. For 10 years, ACPE has continued to refine the standards and the accreditation process, prepare for application to the DoE, and to accredit institutes.

The bland recital of the emerging consensus among the major psychoanalytic organization disguises the wrenching struggles both within the Consortium and our Division Board. It particularly overlooks the role many of our members played in forging a consensus and at times bringing other groups dragging and screaming onto agreement. Although many members served on the Consortium, certainly Nat Stockhamer, Lew Aron, Jonathan Slavin, and Laurie Wagner stand out not only among our own members, but also of the Consortium members. It is fair to assert that while these and other Division members actively attended to the value and importance of psychoanalytic psychology and the issues particular to “our” institutes, their contributions in many ways “saved” Consortium members from shortsighted and preemptive attempts at protecting their “turf” to the detriment of a wider concern for psychoanalytic education and training.

 

Whither ACPE?

The Consortium has largely continued to function in support of the ACPE. ACPE has been largely dependent upon Consortium members to fund its operations. It has also been highly dependent upon volunteer efforts of the ACPE officers who have devoted countless unpaid hours in advancing the goal of establishing ACPE as an accrediting organization. Over the years, the requests for funds have been relatively modest and our Division has typically provided $5,000 a year to support operating expenses. The problem is that until ACPE is recognized as an accrediting body by the Department of Education, it cannot in good conscience charge institutes that apply for accreditation. Also, ACPE cannot apply for recognition by the DoE unless it is able to translate its standards and procedures into “bureaucratese.” Hence they have needed to employ a bureaucrat sympathetic to psychoanalysis (such people evidently do exist) as a consultant. Finally, even a well-crafted application to the DoE needs to be accompanied by two things: a demonstration that there is an actual need for this service, and financial resources to keep ACPE going.

So this is where we come down to the current year. In order to make the final push to seek DoE approval, ACPE must have vastly increased financial resources and a significant number of current and future applicants for accreditation. While the Consortium organizations created and sustained ACPE for ten years, only institutes can make ACPE a going concern. The Consortium has been asked to bankroll the application and to provide sufficient funds to convince DoE that it is a viable organization. Division 39’s share of this request comes to $40,000 payable over the next 18 months. If these funds are not forthcoming, the process is likely to grind to a halt if not fail altogether. If these funds are provided and ACPE still fails to gain DoE approval, some of the funds will be returned to the Division. Finally, money or no, DoE approval or no, ACPE needs institutes applying for accreditation.

Whither Institutes?

ACPE offers a process whereby institutes may obtain external accreditation for their programs. One problem with this is that many institutes do not necessarily see the value of external accreditation. As noted above, APsaA institutes must seek and maintain internal accreditation and may feel that this is sufficient. NAAP is an accrediting body for many psychoanalytic training programs and many of these programs might not be able to meet ACPE standards even if they desired to do so. Other institutes may simply not see the benefit of accreditation. Although there are certain benefits accruing to recognition by DoE, these may not be compelling to institutes struggling to stay “above water” in an increasingly difficulty time for training programs.

Why is this important to Division of Psychoanalysis

As noted above, not only has the Division been a participant, but also it has been the linchpin of this process and has consistently been supported by the Division Board. That in itself cannot answer the question as to the value ACPE has for the Division. We believe that external accreditation of psychoanalytic education is certainly an important part of our mission to improve psychoanalytic education generally and psychoanalytic training generally. External accreditation is likely to lead institutes to become more pluralistic and rigorous in their approach to teaching and increasing fair and transparent in identifying candidate “milestones” and evaluating candidate progress. This is certainly a reflection of our values as a psychoanalytic psychology organization.

It is a fair question to ask whether the current request for funding accurately reflects the needs of our members, many of whom are not institute graduates or candidates, many of whom have serious concerns about defining psychoanalysis solely through institute training. This is an important objection. I believe there has been an insufficient attempt to mobilize institutes and institute leaders and graduates to make separate contributions to a project that will mainly benefit institute training. I am encourages that ACPE officers have acknowledge this “gap” in seeking funding and plan to make this effort in the future.

I believe that this last request, as substantial as it is, reflects an important contribution to seeing through an 18-year project that has been vitally important to many of our members.  The fact remains that the hefty request would not have seemed so hefty had ACPE had a crystal ball and foreseen what it would take to complete the process. Instead it has had a “low ball” approach to budgeting based on paying current bills and “making do.” I hope that our Division Board and our members will continue to support this final push to get ACPE functioning independently.

The Division of Psychoanalysis and the American Psychological Association-Part I

In the last few weeks a great deal has been written by our members on the Bylaws Discussion Forum concerning the Division’s relationship with APA. Many of those opposed to the bylaws changes frame their concerns in terms of our need to remain connected to APA, its governance and policy making. Their concerns can be summarized a follows:

• If psychologists are allowed to be full members of the Division, many current members will resign from APA, thereby weakening our ability to sustain our current number of representatives to APA Council and thereby reducing our influence within APA.
• If psychologists and nonpsychologists who are not members of APA are allowed to serve in the offices of secretary, treasurer and president, our ability to represent psychoanalytic psychology within APA will be reduced as these officers would have no credibility in their dealings with APA.
• If psychologists who are not APA members are allowed into the Division, and they, along with nonpsychologists are allowed to hold key offices, our organization will become a "generic" psychoanalytic association rather than a force to promote and defend the science, practice and teaching of psychoanalysis in psychology.

These reasons for opposing the bylaws changes rest on a number of assumptions that I do not find credible, at least partly due to history of previous changes. For four years, nonpsychologist members of the Division have been eligible to vote in our elections and run for the office of section representative and member-at-large. There has been no great influx of nonpsychologists into the division and no one has competed for an office at the board level in that time. Also, although always true, in the last three years, we have realized that psychologists who are not APA members are able to join the Division as Affiliate Members, without voting or office holding rights. (The Division board had always assumed differently until we asked APA attorney to review our bylaws. The finding was that the Affiliate category, while not intended for psychologists, could not exclude them.) Still, few have chosen to do so. This was the history we relied upon in developing the bylaws proposals regarding membership and membership rights.

Obviously I do not share the dire predictions listed above. More importantly, I actually do share the concerns of members concerning our need to involvement in the governance and policymaking of APA. This is a challenge that will continue regardless of the outcome of the bylaws vote. More on that in Part II.

Did You Hear the One About the Forty Psychoanalysts Who Walked Into a Meeting?

Well, I am afraid the punch line to this story is not very funny (see below). At the same time, there was some humor and a great deal of relief when the Board of Directors (BoD) Meeting was held in January. First on the agenda was a discussion and vote on the proposed bylaws changes that had been passed by the BoD in August 2011. As you know (if you have read the earlier blog), the membership vote to approve the changes was suspended after it became clear that many members were not only opposed to the changes, but also felt there had been insufficient time to discuss and debate the changes. The BoD first offered a discussion forum for members to post questions and propose alternative wording for the measures; but this process proved cumbersome and few members participated in the discussions. The BoD then decided to revise the bylaws and present them again for approval of the new BoD in January. This is where the story of the forty psychoanalysts begins.

As president of the Division, my primary function is to move the agenda forward and facilitate resolutions and board decisions. As the board assembled, we were also greeted by about eight members of the Division who arrived for the discussion of the bylaws changes: all of them opposed to most of the proposed changes. Now I have attended BoD meetings as a guest and officer for about twelve years and have watched (and participated) in some lively and passionate debates; but this was the first time that the BoD was essentially confronted with a group of members solidly opposed to what the BoD had unanimously endorsed only months before. What a great day to assume the job of being residing officer!

Well, to get to the end of my story, we spent the morning discussing and debating the bylaws changes, far more than the hour allotted out of a busy agenda. I admit I felt increasingly anxious that the debating would fill up the entire day and no actual work would be completed. Knowing that the BoD would again endorse the bylaws changes once allowed to vote, I was concerned about the impact that would have on our colleagues. I was relieved to have our parliamentarian, Laurie Wagner, by my side, not so much for her rulings, as for her ability to help me contain my anxiety.

And the result? After the discussion the BoD voted to approve the bylaw changes with one exception and one amendment. The membership and rights and privileges changes were passed without change, as was the change in the responsibilities of the Publication Committee. We decided to “pull” the proposed name change, even though there appeared to be an emerging understanding of the purpose of the change, and refer the issue of changing our name to a new committee. Finally, the proposed change to allow electronic voting for bylaws changes was amended to make it clear that members could choose to vote either electronically or by post.

So what happened? While strong feelings were expressed for and against the proposed changes, we ended the discussion with positive feelings on all sides and the recognition that all those present wanted the best for the Division and for psychoanalytic psychology. So what is the joke’s punch line? “They had a respectful and reasonable discussion.” It will never make it into the Joke Hall of Fame, but I think we were all relieved and pleased with the outcome.

We are now in the next phase of our discussion and debate about the proposed changes and Division members are encouraged to participate in the Bylaws Discussion Forum that will last until late February. If you are not subscribed to the forum, please contact Ruth Helein (div39@namgmt.com). Once debate closes, pro and con statements will be added to the bylaws ballot and should be send out to members for their vote in mid-to late March. We will know the results one month later.