A Voice of Change

Dear Colleagues,
Many of us are now back to our lives at home after a week or two in Europe both at the IPA Congress and, for a lucky few, having a chance to tour around Europe a bit more. Now that we’re home thoughts about our own Association return to mind.

A voice of change has taken hold in our Association. These changes and the voices supporting them began softly, probably at least a decade ago, and they continue to make themselves felt. Many of us have been working to promote such changes and because I’m a candidate for President-Elect of APsaA I’d like to tell you about some of the changes I’ve favored and worked to bring about. Let’s start out on the issue which seems to be the most prominent right now, the link between certification and TA appointment. The voices in our Association seeking to change this link are varied and consistent. Our voting membership appears to be increasingly strong in seeking relief from the continuing burden of this link.

A vote several years ago to remove any reference regarding certification from our bylaws, which I supported, came close to achieving a majority. The Local Option bylaw, which I supported very strongly and which is quite consistent with my own thinking, sought to give greater control over TA appointments to our local institutes. This Local Option proposal gained a robust 57% of the votes cast, within striking distance of the super majority required for a bylaw change.

Other evidence of these voices can be seen in the results of the survey on certification of 2002, recently summarized on this list by Tom Bartlett. Fully half of our membership expressed the sentiment that our Association not have a certification process at all. Tom also reported data showing that a dwindling number of our graduates are pursuing certification.

A final piece of evidence, which we saw at the recent Congress of Institutes in Denver, was the strong division within BOPS itself concerning the certification/TA link. Several of our largest Institutes were front and center in advocating for increased flexibility regarding TA appointments. Additionally a major BOPS committee, the PIPE (Project for Innovation in Psychoanalytic Education), has been giving very careful consideration to routes to TA appointment other than through certification.

There are several reasons why this issue is so important to all of us. First, this debate has been front and center for so long that our ability to make progress in other vital areas has been compromised. Secondly, the restrictive link of TA appointment to certification has major effects on the career advancement of our members. Finally the link has had a very significant, harmful but less directly observable effect at limiting the candidates who seek admission to our institutes. Our institutes have powerful competitors, especially in our larger urban areas.

The confluence of these voices for change in APsaA must not be ignored. I believe our leadership must be willing to assure the Association that this problem will be addressed and resolved. If elected I will make this my number one priority. My personal and very strong preference for achieving this is through a local option arrangement. In some future notes I will describe several other goals that I consider essential to achieve as President and I will also discuss some of the other means that will be available to me as President to bring about a resolution to the certification /TA dilemma.

Warren R. Procci