"There's Been A Change"

Dear Colleagues,

There has been an interesting series of communications, stimulated by the most recent Soprano’s episode, concerning supervision and certification among other matters. I agree with Jonathan House and others who favor deemphasizing certification as a prerequisite for TA status. I think local option is an idea whose time may finally have come. However, I may well disagree with Jonathan about the concept of externalization. Most of our members are deeply concerned about matters of psychoanalytic education and it would be a great shame if educational matters were largely “externalized”

I believe we are also hearing allusions to a deeper issue here. Allow me a digression. I like using movies as teaching stimuli. In “The Queen” a crucial moment occurs when Elizabeth says to her mother with more than a bit of apprehension, “Something has happened. There’s been a change. Some shift in values.” I think this has happened and is continuing to happen in our profession. Arlene, Jane, and Henry have all given voice to a concept of supervision which seems different from the one which some of us experienced so many years ago. They describe a collaborative, mutual, more “two person” process than one characterized more by the passing down of expertise from a master to a relative novice. If so, we’ll need to assure that our organization and our profession responds accordingly.

Perhaps the final “Soprano’s” episode will be similarly fecund.

Warren R. Procci