Dear Colleagues,
As it looks like this trading of posts may go on until all the ballots are in, let me say right away that I completely agree with Drew Clemens that this election is not about certification, or local option, or by-law amendments.
It is about whether we want the more traditional forces who have run this organization for decades (whether in the executive committee or through the Board of Professional Standards) to continue: to resist the call of the future; to resist the call for full and equal rights for social workers, for psychologists, and for academics; to resist the call for candidates to have greater choice in choosing their analyst; to resist the call for greater democratization and for greater investment of power in our democratic processes.
Or do we want our elected officers to speak for the long disenfranchised, to speak to both our elitist history and our inclusive future, to work diligently to move our organization towards a creative and diverse future, to become an association of psychoanalysts that really is at the center of the next generations of psychoanalytic ideas and psychoanalytic practitioners. These are the truly progressive candidates who are best suited to represent all of our members.
As far as depth of experience is concerned, I’ll say, hopefully immodestly and briefly, that mine is unmatched by any recent candidate for this office, with five years as an officer and a total of nine years as an elected member of our Board of Directors, as well as with many years of additional experience in this and in other organizations (rather than take your time here please visit my website at www.wrprocci.org or http://warrenprocci.blogspot.com ).
Yes, labels are troubling, but sometimes necessary to clarify differences. I am asking you to vote for the progressive candidates in this election, so that we can all effect the ongoing transformation of our organization into a rich, creative, democratic place for all of us (analysts, therapists, teachers, researchers) who love this field.
Sincerely,
Warren R. Procci, Candidate for President-Elect, APsaA
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
A Distinguishing Feature of My Candidacy
Dear Colleagues,
The recent exchanges about removing certification from the bylaws help to highlight a distinguishing aspect of my candidacy.
“Taking certification out of the bylaws” would not resolve our difficulties about certification. The leadership of BOPS has been and is likely to remain firm in their insistence that all institutes must follow “national standards”, which include certification.
The difference between my position and Drew’s is clear. He writes:
“The prominent issue of certification should be resolved so that the procedure is perceived to be collegial rather than noxious if it is retained, and the institutes ***through BOPS*** should be freed to be more flexible about how they select training and supervising analysts” (emphasis added).
This would leave the amount of “flexibility” available to institutes up to BOPS which might well amount to flexibility within quite rigid limits.
I trust our institutes to act reasonably. I favor local institute option as to whether or not an institute uses certification as part of their procedure for selecting TAs.
I hope you will vote for me.
Warren R. Procci, Candidate for President-Elect, APsaA
The recent exchanges about removing certification from the bylaws help to highlight a distinguishing aspect of my candidacy.
“Taking certification out of the bylaws” would not resolve our difficulties about certification. The leadership of BOPS has been and is likely to remain firm in their insistence that all institutes must follow “national standards”, which include certification.
The difference between my position and Drew’s is clear. He writes:
“The prominent issue of certification should be resolved so that the procedure is perceived to be collegial rather than noxious if it is retained, and the institutes ***through BOPS*** should be freed to be more flexible about how they select training and supervising analysts” (emphasis added).
This would leave the amount of “flexibility” available to institutes up to BOPS which might well amount to flexibility within quite rigid limits.
I trust our institutes to act reasonably. I favor local institute option as to whether or not an institute uses certification as part of their procedure for selecting TAs.
I hope you will vote for me.
Warren R. Procci, Candidate for President-Elect, APsaA
Sunday, December 9, 2007
What Distinguishes My Candidacy for President-Elect
Dear Colleagues (especially the undecided, dispirited, or confused),
My apologies for yet another post, but it seems that my letters and postings about inclusiveness, diversity, democracy, and reconciliation spurred first a flurry of negative responses and have now brought on postings that, in some ways, nearly copy my words and positions. But the differences among the candidates are great, and this is a very important election, so please vote, and vote thoughtfully.
HERE ARE WHERE THE IMPORTANT DIFFERENCES LIE:
I have said repeatedly, and have long supported, that we need an inclusive and democratic vision of our future. (Among other things this means absolute equal rights and opportunity for social workers, academics, psychologists etc.) Other candidates say ‘yes, but we’re all analysts….’, as though equality can just be assumed.
I have repeatedly raised the issue of diversity (in race, gender, sexual orientation, culture, and discipline, etc.) and our need to embrace diversity as a foundation for creativity and progress. Other candidates have seemed loathe to grapple with this fact in any depth.
I have spoken strongly for our need to attend to our history and to work to reconcile the exclusionary wounds and abuses that have marginalized those within and without our organization. My more traditional opponents think we do best to ignore that history, as if we could possibly move forward or bring people together without fully comprehending it.
I have written about the freedom that candidates need to have in choosing the analyst who’s best for them and how, through so-called local option, we can begin to make this happen. The more traditional candidates speak about ‘national standards’, not seeming to realize how our exclusionary and arbitrary national standards have diminished our prominence in the world.
I do favor national standards (just as have been ecumenically designed by the Consortium of major psychoanalytic organizations) and a certification system that is national and independent of our organization, as is the case in all other clinical and academic fields. Those who are more traditional want to obscure this issue, either by diminishing it, by delaying it, by ‘task forcing’ it, or by acting as if all hell (a 3-letter word) would let loose if such changes occurred.
As I’ve noted before, we are at a ‘tipping’ point in our organization, and the choice is to continue with business as usual or to take some creative and evolutionary steps to help our organization thrive as the robust, diverse, and creative umbrella for psychoanalysts and psychoanalysis that it has the potential to be.
Please do contact me if you have any questions or concerns (email wrprocci@sbcglobal.net, or phone 626-793-7957). And please don’t neglect to vote.
P.S. As an aside, it amuses me somewhat to be depicted as ‘radical’ or ‘divisive’. In case you don’t know, I have been the Treasurer of APsaA for the past six years. I’m a middle-aged white guy who walks around our meetings in three-piece suits, quietly listens to the perspective of others, works easily and collaboratively with my colleagues, and rarely utters a four-letter word (though they don’t escape the momentary fantasy).
So, in a sense, I’m an establishment figure who greatly values our organization, who gets things done in productive and cooperative ways, and whose ideas about governance, outreach, research, and practice overlap on many points with our more conservative candidates. But I also think that the differences I’ve outlined above are crucial to the future success and creativity of our organization, and qualify me as the best candidate to lead all of our members.
Warren R. Procci, Candidate for President-Elect, APsaA
My apologies for yet another post, but it seems that my letters and postings about inclusiveness, diversity, democracy, and reconciliation spurred first a flurry of negative responses and have now brought on postings that, in some ways, nearly copy my words and positions. But the differences among the candidates are great, and this is a very important election, so please vote, and vote thoughtfully.
HERE ARE WHERE THE IMPORTANT DIFFERENCES LIE:
I have said repeatedly, and have long supported, that we need an inclusive and democratic vision of our future. (Among other things this means absolute equal rights and opportunity for social workers, academics, psychologists etc.) Other candidates say ‘yes, but we’re all analysts….’, as though equality can just be assumed.
I have repeatedly raised the issue of diversity (in race, gender, sexual orientation, culture, and discipline, etc.) and our need to embrace diversity as a foundation for creativity and progress. Other candidates have seemed loathe to grapple with this fact in any depth.
I have spoken strongly for our need to attend to our history and to work to reconcile the exclusionary wounds and abuses that have marginalized those within and without our organization. My more traditional opponents think we do best to ignore that history, as if we could possibly move forward or bring people together without fully comprehending it.
I have written about the freedom that candidates need to have in choosing the analyst who’s best for them and how, through so-called local option, we can begin to make this happen. The more traditional candidates speak about ‘national standards’, not seeming to realize how our exclusionary and arbitrary national standards have diminished our prominence in the world.
I do favor national standards (just as have been ecumenically designed by the Consortium of major psychoanalytic organizations) and a certification system that is national and independent of our organization, as is the case in all other clinical and academic fields. Those who are more traditional want to obscure this issue, either by diminishing it, by delaying it, by ‘task forcing’ it, or by acting as if all hell (a 3-letter word) would let loose if such changes occurred.
As I’ve noted before, we are at a ‘tipping’ point in our organization, and the choice is to continue with business as usual or to take some creative and evolutionary steps to help our organization thrive as the robust, diverse, and creative umbrella for psychoanalysts and psychoanalysis that it has the potential to be.
Please do contact me if you have any questions or concerns (email wrprocci@sbcglobal.net, or phone 626-793-7957). And please don’t neglect to vote.
P.S. As an aside, it amuses me somewhat to be depicted as ‘radical’ or ‘divisive’. In case you don’t know, I have been the Treasurer of APsaA for the past six years. I’m a middle-aged white guy who walks around our meetings in three-piece suits, quietly listens to the perspective of others, works easily and collaboratively with my colleagues, and rarely utters a four-letter word (though they don’t escape the momentary fantasy).
So, in a sense, I’m an establishment figure who greatly values our organization, who gets things done in productive and cooperative ways, and whose ideas about governance, outreach, research, and practice overlap on many points with our more conservative candidates. But I also think that the differences I’ve outlined above are crucial to the future success and creativity of our organization, and qualify me as the best candidate to lead all of our members.
Warren R. Procci, Candidate for President-Elect, APsaA
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
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
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
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