My Presentation at the Future of Psychoanalytic Education Conference

Power and Authority in Institute Life

Let me begin by telling you about my background in dealing with authority in educational settings. I have been a Director of a psychiatric residency training program (6 years), a Dean and EC Chair of a psychoanalytic institute (5 years), and a Trustee of a college (9 years).

I’d like to take a moment to describe my observations and my reaction to the educational milieu when I returned to my college as a Trustee 31 years after I graduated. During my undergraduate years, Wagner College was a very traditional and conservative institution. At one time it had been affiliated with the Lutheran Church. Instruction occurred in typical classroom settings, utilizing formal lectures and standard textbooks and other readings. Upon my return in 1999 I found a world of change. Wagner had adopted a “Learning Community” (LC) model for a good portion of its instruction. LC’s include a cluster of courses linked by a single theme and taken by the same students. The LC’s were joined by a reflexive tutorial (RFT) where emphasis is placed on experiential learning in “real world” internship like settings. Writing skills and teamwork were essential RFT elements.

In the world of most psychoanalytic institutes, there probably is not such a contrast between learning today and the way it occurred in 1968. Indeed one could probably trace long term stability in the nature of psychoanalytic education back to the 1920’s with the introduction and development of the Eitingon model. While I think much of the tripartite model is extraordinarily valuable, I also think it highly probable that most educators would find our persistent adherence to one educational approach remarkable. While LC’s and RFT’s may or may not be a useful model for psychoanalytic education, I believe our slowness, perhaps even our inability, to innovate is highly problematic and stifling. As I’ve mentioned in other settings, our psychoanalytic educational programs are running the risk of becoming museums and not incubators of new ideas.

I would hardly be alone in seeing the concept of authority as a culprit in this stasis. There are many diverse key values that are part of an educational process, such as: respect for learning, capacity for innovation, development of new ideas, acquisition of skills, development of professionalism, understanding the value of influence and being influenced to name just a few. Authority does have a role, and an important one at that, in the educational process but it can also stifle, with deadly efficiency at times. We have not been particularly effective at balancing our use of authority or finding its best uses in psychoanalytic education.

Looking over Webster’s I found 8 different uses for the word “authority”, each with a nuanced difference. The meaning for authority I found most problematic for purposes of this discussion, and unfortunately one which I think we utilize too much in psychoanalytic education, perhaps not always knowingly, but at least at some times quite knowingly, is the idea of “a power to require and receive submissiveness”.

While most of us would no doubt not want to see this aspect of authority as having a major role in institute life there is in fact a legitimate place for this concept of authority, and one which is quite problematic for many of us. I am referring to those instances where we need to deal with issues of candidates or colleagues not conforming to various educational or professional requirements and even some extremely serious cases which would require sanctions, disciplinary action, etc. such as cases involving boundary violations, ethical lapses, etc. These are important responsibilities in institute life and areas where we need to exercise this form of authority. Yet it is often difficult for us to adequately discharge our responsibilities regarding these uses. In more serious situations, it can be almost impossible to find colleagues willing to serve on appropriate committees. It does strongly suggest, especially when paired with other difficulties we have with the exercise of authority, that there may be something problematic for many of us when put in positions where we need to exercise authority. While I think that these problems are also endemic to other professional endeavors, I do sense that the exercise of this form of authority may be particularly difficult for many of us as analysts. I am sure many of you will also recognize how hard it is to get faculty members to write “honest” evaluations on our candidates, either for the classroom or for the supervisory setting, and how it can be very hard to accept responsibility for managing candidates’ progression. All of us are no doubt aware of the more than occasional “compassionate graduations”. Yet if we are to be taken seriously as a profession, it is necessary that we be capable of exercising this form of authority.

We do not however, need to use this component of authority for issues concerned with transmission of knowledge and development of new ideas. We have gotten ourselves into a lot of difficulty when we have. There are many situations where we have brought the “power to require and receive submissiveness” component of authority into our educational processes as opposed to our regulatory processes. Many of our positions concerning requirements for admission, graduation, membership, and TA advancement, all of which may be considered under the rubric of “standards” are prime examples. So often, especially in APsaA Institutes, these are taken as “givens” and not considered as subject to negotiation or open review, discussion and objective consideration. This also creates a general ambience which can be stifling of innovation and creativity in our teaching. My own belief is that our “new” candidates, who are far more likely to represent women, gays, psychologists, social workers, other mental health professionals, and academics, are much less likely to accept the handing down of this form of non-challengeable authority than our traditional candidates have historically been. Missing from this list of new candidates, in my experience, are significant numbers of ethnic and racially diverse groups which should represent a new priority for us. I believe our increasing difficulties, especially in some APsaA Institutes, in recruiting new candidates derives from a sense by potential applicants of the presence of such a stifling environment, i.e. a museum, not an incubator.

A final element of authority, which is constructive, comes from two additional ideas in Webster’s, notably the concept of “justifying grounds” or “convincing force”. For psychoanalysis to be credible as a school of thought and as a healing art, there must be such a justifying, convincing perception or belief about what we do. This cannot be gained by decree, as I believe we have often tried historically, with spectacular lack of success. Rather it can be accomplished only by the transparent, open discussion of our ideas and a willingness to have all of them examined in the crucible of public review.

Perhaps at some future time, a senior psychoanalytic graduate will return to his/her institute of origin and be pleasantly surprised by the flowering of new forms for learning.

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