Position Statement 1: Diversity

Dear Colleagues,

Once upon a time we psychoanalysts were a pretty homogeneous lot. The hallways and conference rooms of our semiannual meetings were populated mostly by male physicians. That has changed -- changed remarkably. The number of women in our ranks has increased steadily, as has the number of gay colleagues, and we now include Ph.D. psychologists, MSWs, MFTs, and academics. This new diversity has caused us plenty of growing pains, but it is essential to our successful evolution into the future.

The changes did not come about entirely voluntarily; it was the lawsuit against APsaA in the mid 80s that started the deluge. Our organization is still reeling from the aftermath of that lawsuit, and the scars inflicted by decades of exclusion and mistreatment. Few of the APsaA members of those days expected the changes to be as significant as they proved. Whether supporters of the lawsuit or opponents, most of us figured that only a small number of new analysts would join us, and that they would be absorbed into our culture as they integrated themselves into the membership. I doubt that most “old” APsaA members foresaw the influx of new colleagues that actually resulted, nor the profound, creative, and beneficial ways that it would shape the evolution and culture of our organization.

We include many more women now, for example. Their influence has prodded us to develop new ways of clinical thinking and new modes of discourse. And it can continue to help us grow and develop too. But we will realize the fullest potential of this new opportunity only to the extent that we are willing to nurture it. The new perspectives that our female colleagues bring to the Association may well, if we can allow it, help us improve our organizational dialog, and encourage creative solutions to some of the old problems that have dogged us for years.

Similarly, the advent of other disciplines, clinical and nonclinical, into our field has already enriched our organization clinically, theoretically, and administratively. To adduce just one small example, the new cadre of psychologists and academics, whose training includes research, has expanded a vital, and heretofore underdeveloped, aspect of psychoanalytic studies and we have only just begun to take advantage of that new potential.

Our gay colleagues have done much more than enhance and enliven our clinical and theoretical perspectives on gays – they have also raised our collective consciousness about the dangers and pervasiveness of “normative” assumptions. In response we began to take a public stance against discrimination, and we are now reaping the benefits in a far more favorable public perception as being less rigid and conventional and, once again, as empowering and liberating.

My point is that although our newly found diversity was born in strife, it is nonetheless a major asset -- provided that we all learn to embrace it and allow ourselves to be expanded by the variety of worldviews exemplified in our expanded membership.

I myself have always supported a wider opening of our doors. My earliest involvement with APsaA was to push for greater local autonomy over admissions of non-MD candidates. Along with my many “traditional” teaching and administrative roles, I have spent more than a decade teaching in a non-APsaA institute where the candidate and faculty populations are much more similar to our new profile than to the old one. That institute is thriving, with a reliable supply of candidates and a continually evolving curriculum richly informed by the interests of its members, including such real world and academic areas as women’s studies, gay issues, infant research, and so on.

I think that the history of psychoanalysis, and the history of APsaA, have shown that while change is unsettling at first, it is both necessary and desirable. Let’s work to attract new candidates and new members from all backgrounds. More candidates of color should be our next priority. We need the breadth that comes from difference and the depth that comes from courage. Psychoanalysis aspires to universality, but we can’t live up to that aspiration in an exclusionary bubble.

Diversity is essential for evolution.

Warren R. Procci, Candidate for President-Elect of APsaA