Psychoanalytic Consortium Report: Licensure,
Accreditation, Certification, and Beyond
Recently it came to my attention that my previous comments
about accreditation formed the basis of a warning to members of the National
Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP) by its president, Doug
Maxwell. He described me as making a “sweeping plea,” promoting the idea that
“all tri-discipline institutes [should] . .
. accredit with the Accreditation
Council for Psychoanalytic Education.” He inferred that my comments reflected a
larger attempt to “regulate psychoanalysis to the scope of other professions,
and at worst to eliminate us as practitioners completely.” So in this article I will review three areas of controversy, licensure, accreditation, and certification that have occupied Consortium discussions and decisions. At the same time, I want to be clear that these are my views only and do not represent the views of the Consortium or the Division of Psychoanalysis. Hopefully, I will get most of the facts right, feel free to correct me.
Licensure
The Consortium has taken the position that psychoanalysis
is an advanced specialty of the mental health disciplines and that
accreditation, certification, and licensure should be guided by this basic proposition.
The Consortium also has a policy statement that psychoanalysis is not an
independent profession and should not be separately licensed, a position that
has not stopped states from developing licensing laws to regulate
psychoanalysis in Vermont, New York, and New Jersey. The fact is that in many states a person can set up a practice as a psychotherapist or, in this case, a psychoanalyst, and not be licensed. Whether this is a good thing or not may depend upon how many incompetent licensed clinicians you have had dealings with over the years.
I am puzzled what it can mean to be a licensed
psychoanalyst. As a clinical psychologist, I have been trained to understand
and work with people through assessment, diagnosis and treatment of emotional
and psychological difficulties. Although there are important differences,
clinical social workers and psychiatrists have roughly the same basic role and
therefore an educational background steeped in an understanding of the broad
range of human difficulties. As a psychoanalytic practitioner, the theory and
practice of psychoanalysis informs my understanding and structures the way I
work with others. One of the ways I work with others more or less conforms to a
“standard” of psychoanalytic treatment, that is, seeing patients multiple times
a week, using the couch, etc. I am licensed to deliver mental health services;
but my training and orientation reflects my commitment to psychoanalytic
thought.
This will no longer be the case in states that enact laws similar to New York’s. There, a licensed psychoanalyst need not have had the breadth, depth, or length of experiences that have typically been considered required. Under the New York law, someone who wants to be a licensed psychoanalyst must acquire both the equivalent of mental health training and psychoanalytic training within the same institution, over approximately the same period of time spent by a mental health professional in similar analytic training.
Does it matter? That is hard to say. Psychologists were told they did not have the medical background to justify independent practice. Social workers were told they did not have the social science and research background to justify private practice. And our psychoanalytic institutes, including the so-called “tri-discipline” institutes are eagerly willing to adapt their curriculum to accommodate non-mental health trained candidates. We have now created a new kind of mental health professional, called a psychoanalyst. As a result, the definition of who is and who is not a psychoanalyst has changed and whether it serves the larger purpose of advancing psychoanalytic theory, practice, and public acceptance remains to be seen.
Accreditation
We are entering a new phase of the Consortium’s
relationship with ACPE. The Consortium does not plan to make further
contributions to ACPE operations. We have reached the point that this
organization will thrive (or not) depending upon the fees and contributions
from the institutes they will serve. In the last year there has been progress
on that front. Although ACPE has yet to acquire the all-important “federal
link” that would allow it to initiate a request for recognition by the
Department of Education (DoE), it has begun to accredit a sufficient number of
institutes that would make ACPE a viable proposition. For those who find such details absorbing, this is what the “federal link” is. To have a “federal link” means that someone in the government sees the value in having a new accrediting body. In practical terms, this means getting someone high up in government to agree that psychoanalytic training at an accredited institute is important for this government organization. If the head of the Veteran’s Administration wanted its mental health professionals trained as psychoanalysts in accredited institutes, for example, this would constitute the “federal link” that would allow ACPE to make a valid claim to the DoE that ACPE application should go forward. This would, of course, only be a start. Since, as noted above, ABAP has also explored becoming a recognized by the DoE, they would have to go through the same process.
There remains, of course, the core issue of the frequency
and length of the personal and training analyses. While the requirement of “at
least three sessions weekly on separate days” was adopted primarily to insist
upon the depth and intensity of training, it is certainly true that this is an
aspirational statement about psychoanalytic practice that can easily feel like
hegemony. My own very limited survey of some institutes that cannot meet this
expectation, however, is that the three-times-per-week standard is considered
valuable but impractical in today’s marketplace. I know at least one training
program did change their policy to conform to the standard and the world did
not collapse. While the standard of frequency of sessions has some empirical
support and broad acceptance as an ideal, the fact remains that it is a much
harder “sell” to analysands than in the past, and not solely because of
financial considerations.
Certification
This brings me to the last of the “big three” and the
last to be taken up by the Consortium. In the last few years, we have been
discussing the advisability and feasibility of developing a mechanism that
would provide a common standard to certify that someone has completed
psychoanalytic training. As I wrote about in an earlier column, there are three
competing organizations that certify someone as a psychoanalyst.
Development of an independent body that would essentially
reproduce the BOPS process is seen as a nonstarter for the Consortium. Although
some of those associated with this plan have indicated this independent body
would certify any graduate of any institution, this ambition seems improbable
given the very different purpose of BOPS in identifying training analysts. Ho
that would work is a mystery. At the same time the only psychologists and
social workers would have access to a specialty designation that fits ACPE
criteria and is similar to other specialty designations. Finally, this would
introduce two levels of specialty designation, with one perceived as the more
“real” and valuable, essentially re-instantiating turf conflicts that have been
minimized over the last twenty or so years..
Why Licensure,
Accreditation, and Certification?
In the interests of full disclosure I will point out that
I never attended a psychoanalytic institute, my personal therapy was with
someone who was not a certified psychoanalyst, and my education in
psychoanalytic ideas, begun in graduate school, has continued through
supervision, consultation, and conferences/seminars. To the extent I am a
psychoanalyst, I am a most unregulated
psychoanalyst. My education does not conform to the standards advocated either
by ABAP or ACPE. Both organizations
seek to regulate who is and who is not a psychoanalyst and under their regulations
I am not.
As someone who has participated in the Consortium
meetings over the last three years, I marvel at the effort, dedication, and
perseverance of so many of our colleagues struggling to influence licensing
laws, develop accreditation standards and support recognition of the value of
certification. Their ongoing efforts to regulate our professions, to regularize
our standards, and to promote professional recognition of competence inspire my
admiration. At the same time, I wonder about the value of increasing
regulation, increasing “hurdles” in the way of professional development. We
have seen the rampant “bean-counting” mentality inflicted upon our graduate
schools and internships sites, all in the name of demonstrating that the stamped-out
products of our teaching are competent and efficient, able to draw upon the
latest scientific studies to fashion time-saving approaches to treatment of
human ills.
I bring this up not because my experiences are unique, but because they are so utterly ordinary. We are constantly challenged by others to do our best. Maybe at its best all our regulations and demands are institutionalized ways to force us to connect with others, to remind us that we only grow and change in connection with others. To request licensure, accreditation and certification, not to speak of the yearly grind of continuing education and conferences, affords us at the very least opportunity to demonstrate to ourselves that the work we do is important and vital and can stand up to, and perhaps benefit from, the scrutiny of others.
In fact my actual experiences with institutional hurdles
have been positive, except for my own grumblings, resistance, and paranoia. I found
completing a dissertation to be an insuperable task until I submitted to my
dissertation chair’s invitation to finally join his research group and accept
the help, support, and ideas of my fellow students. My ABPP exam was actually a
pleasant and collegial experience. My time as newsletter editor was not without
its moments of being called on the carpet, but it was a soft carpet and no
bones were broken in the process. Perhaps I have been lucky, but institutional
regulations do not always result in power plays and conflicts.
I think that at least at times our institutional restraints and resulting conflicts provide opportunities to bridge divides of training, philosophy and perceived power differences. I think the Psychoanalytic Consortium itself is a model of how four professional groups warily came together and not without some drama proved able to see past our institutional and historical divides to work together. At our last meeting, another psychoanalytic group requested to join the Consortium, suggesting further lowering of old animosities.
So I plead guilty to making a “sweeping plea” that our psychoanalytic organizations and institutions develop ways of valuing our diversity, recognizing our similarities, respecting our differences. This necessarily includes developing a measure of humility and irony about our cherished ideas about what constitutes “real” psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic training, and psychoanalytic practice. It also means letting go of something we often prize even more: our grievances. Not all differences can be resolved; but many can be ameliorated by acceptance of our common interests. Given the struggles we really face to inform and educate the public about the value and importance of our work, our interests certainly must outweigh our conflicts.
[1]
American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), American Academy of Psychoanalysis
and Dynamic Psychiatry (AAPDP), American Association for Psychoanalysis for
Clinical Social Work (AAPCSW), and the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the
American Psychological Association.
[2] There is an important variable in addressing the
issue of certification. For the vast majority of applicants, the acquisition of
diplomate status carries very little concrete reward, let alone remuneration.
Academics and employees of large organizations (such as the Veterans
Administration) do experience some benefit with increased pay and status. ACPE
guidelines state that instructors and supervisors should be certified
psychoanalysts. But for most the benefits are primarily rooted in a sense of
accomplishment and a contribution to the profession. In contrast, graduates of
APsaA institutes who undergo the certifying process through BOPS do obtain the
specific benefits of becoming training and supervising analysts; and there is
an inherent incentive for those who wish to do this. While there is a value to
the profession in having psychoanalysis recognized as a specialty by an
independent board (e.g., ABPP or ABE), candidates for diplomate status do not
appear to have an immediate incentive to apply.
[3]
The American Psychiatric Association has a moratorium on establishing any new
specialty board.