Dear Fellow APsaA Member,
“We will transmit the City not only not less, but better and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”
This is the oath that Athenian citizens took on behalf of their city-state. It is guiding me in my candidacy for President-Elect of APsaA.
The preeminent issue in our upcoming election is the future of our Association. At the moment we are strong and stable, but there are some warning clouds that we must not neglect. The decline in our overall numbers has been very slow so far, but the decline among our active dues-paying members is more rapid, and our senior constituency is growing even larger. We are aging and graying, and it is time to address this.
On my web page (www.wrprocci.org or http://warrenprocci.blogspot.com) I have outlined a set of goals I will pursue as President, if you elect me. I will review them briefly here. All are intended to prepare our Association for a future that is better than the present.
1. Relaxation of the exclusionary linkage of certification and TA/SA eligibility. This requirement is a direct contributor to our membership problems. In the evolving psychoanalytic world of today, prospective candidates want to choose their TA’s freely. And in today’s world they can. The more narrowly we restrict our own offerings, therefore, the more likely they are to elect to train not with us, but at any one of the many competitive non-APsaA institiutes. Furthermore, it appears that many of our recent graduates have decided against seeking certification. Only about 15-20% of these colleagues are applying to be certified, and this will narrow TA possibilities for new candidates even further. Add to these practical considerations the contribution that the delinkage issue makes to our current plaguing dissension, and it is easy to see how vital it is for us to resolve this question. In fact, I would make it the number one priority of my presidency.
Efforts to address it in the past have failed, because task forces and pilot groups have been weighted far too heavily in favor of the current balance of power. I would call immediately for a balanced task force to address the issue, and to explore once more a local option proposal that would allow individual institutes to set their own requirements for their own TA’s and SA’s.
2. Pluralistic and democratic government. Hierarchal decision-making has ruled the day in our Association for a long time. Why is this a problem? Because hierarchies are loath to relinquish their power, even when they no longer serve the best interests of the organizations that house them. Like the delinkage struggles, past efforts to deal with membership, education, and appointment issues have often been unbalanced in favor of the very hierarchies they were supposed to democratize. As President I would ensure that our task forces and exploratory committees fairly reflect all components of our membership. I would also move to shift decision-making away from centralized structures and towards our local organizations, where individual voices are more easily heard.
3. A stronger Executive Council. Lately we have become aware that our by-laws do not support a bi-cameral organization. They designate our Executive Council as our Board of Directors. If we are to plan effectively for the future, we will need a strong Board of Directors to set and realize organizational priorities. Too often in the past our Presidents have set our priorities. Presidents may certainly offer individual initiatives; however laudable these may be, however, they are generally abandoned when that President leaves office. The Board of Directors is the structure to which enduring initiatives must be entrusted, as it is only the Board that can safeguard them over the years of changing administrations. I strongly support a much greater role for our board in setting priorities and carrying them out. The way to do this is to add several directors to the Executive Committee, give the Committee on Council a greater role in setting our organizational agenda, and establish an expanded presence and role for Board Committee Chairs at our quarterly governance meetings. These steps haven’t been taken before because the need to empower the Executive Council has not been sufficiently recognized. It is obvious now, however, that the Executive Council must be our policy planning and setting body.
4. Financial Development. Five years as treasurer have made clear to me that we do not possess the resources to do the things we have to do to advance our field. Our current income sources enable us to carry out our basic functions, and we carry them out well. But there is little left over for creative, bold, or innovative efforts. One solution is certainly to bring in more income by encouraging the growth of our membership – yet another reason to resolve the delinkage issue. But I would also encourage the establishment of an endowment fund sufficient to fund the efforts we must make to deal more effectively with the outside world. During my eight years on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee at Wagner College, my alma mater, I was actively involved in just such a major fundraising process. Wagner’s most recent capital campaign has expanded their endowment by $50M.
5. Advocacy. I have a long history in support of APsaA’s advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C. As Treasurer, I worked hard to assure that our Committee on Government Relations and Insurance (CGRI) would have the funding it needed to do its work. Before that, I myself served as Chairman of CGRI. Under my leadership, CGRI made its voice heard on the essential issue of protection of patient privacy. I was part of the team that discovered our current government representative in Washington, Jim Pyles, who has greatly helped us advance the cause of patient confidentiality. During my tenure as CGRI chair, we organized a meeting in Washington where CGRI members had the opportunity to meet with legislators, regulators and policymakers. We also organized (in conjunction with a spring meeting in Washington, D.C.) a “Meet your Legislator” program. We were able to introduce individual members to their legislators, and teach them effective ways to deliver talking points to lawmakers. As President, I would re-establish the tradition of periodic CGRI meetings in Washington.
There are two other areas that interest me greatly and which I would support as President: psychoanalytic research, especially outcome research as in the new research proposal advanced by our current President, and public information and communication efforts. But the five priorities listed above are the ones we must address first if we are to ensure for our Association a future in which these will be relevant – and in which we will have the morale, the structure, and the infrastructure to face that future in a rational and effective manner.
I am absolutely committed to maintaining and enhancing our Association so that we can pass it on to the next generation of psychoanalysts in better condition than we received it.
Best regards,
Warren R. Procci, Candidate for President-Elect, APsaA
Monday, November 19, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Two Modest Proposals for Our Future
Dear Colleagues,
Well, the home stretch is beckoning so I’d like to return to focus on the crucial issues of this election. To me the future of our venerable organization is priority number one.
Here in Pasadena the presence of prestigious Cal Tech has helped spawn an entire industry of biotechnology “incubators”, small companies/labs working on state of the art ideas and then contributing the results of these ideas to the academic, intellectual, health care and yes, even the business world(s). While the analogy is far from perfect I envision an APsaA of the future where our national and local organizations are similarly fertile.
Here are two ideas which I think can help us accomplish this, perhaps even more quickly than at our historic geological pace.
First: After five year’s experience as your Treasurer, combined with a prior four years as an elected Councilor-at–Large, I can tell you that while our resources are sufficient for our basic functioning, they are insufficient to carry out the innovative and forward-looking initiatives which our role and responsibility as a pre-eminent psychoanalytic organization require.
We need to involve ourselves in contemporary processes of resource development. In my nine years of service (and counting) as Trustee of a small liberal arts college, we have undertaken a major capital campaign that has added $50 million dollars to an endowment which had been almost non-existent. I have also had the experience of overseeing the growth of our own reserves over the past five years, through some difficult market periods. In short, capital development and appropriate investment are essential for our successful future.
Second: We must give high priority to our public information efforts. In my tenure on the Executive Committee, we have gotten invaluable help through the addition of a full-time staff member. However, we need to do more. I would make the Committee on Public Information a major player in our organization and support them in developing new ideas to raise our profile further. The use of public relations resources has been controversial to some members, but the time has come to put such efforts front and center, in creative, nuanced, and effective ways.
I am excited about the opportunity to undertake these new steps, and hope we can all engage in a process that can further the development of our organization as a place of creativity, depth, and resourcefulness.
Warren R. Procci, Candidate for President-Elect, APsaA
Well, the home stretch is beckoning so I’d like to return to focus on the crucial issues of this election. To me the future of our venerable organization is priority number one.
Here in Pasadena the presence of prestigious Cal Tech has helped spawn an entire industry of biotechnology “incubators”, small companies/labs working on state of the art ideas and then contributing the results of these ideas to the academic, intellectual, health care and yes, even the business world(s). While the analogy is far from perfect I envision an APsaA of the future where our national and local organizations are similarly fertile.
Here are two ideas which I think can help us accomplish this, perhaps even more quickly than at our historic geological pace.
First: After five year’s experience as your Treasurer, combined with a prior four years as an elected Councilor-at–Large, I can tell you that while our resources are sufficient for our basic functioning, they are insufficient to carry out the innovative and forward-looking initiatives which our role and responsibility as a pre-eminent psychoanalytic organization require.
We need to involve ourselves in contemporary processes of resource development. In my nine years of service (and counting) as Trustee of a small liberal arts college, we have undertaken a major capital campaign that has added $50 million dollars to an endowment which had been almost non-existent. I have also had the experience of overseeing the growth of our own reserves over the past five years, through some difficult market periods. In short, capital development and appropriate investment are essential for our successful future.
Second: We must give high priority to our public information efforts. In my tenure on the Executive Committee, we have gotten invaluable help through the addition of a full-time staff member. However, we need to do more. I would make the Committee on Public Information a major player in our organization and support them in developing new ideas to raise our profile further. The use of public relations resources has been controversial to some members, but the time has come to put such efforts front and center, in creative, nuanced, and effective ways.
I am excited about the opportunity to undertake these new steps, and hope we can all engage in a process that can further the development of our organization as a place of creativity, depth, and resourcefulness.
Warren R. Procci, Candidate for President-Elect, APsaA
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Yes, the Politics of Old Are Inadequate
Dear Colleagues,
I am reluctant to respond directly to Drew’s recent posting to this list, but it astonished and puzzled me in ways that can’t simply be ignored. I think the last time someone referred to me as “the other” anything was when I was on the wrong side of a romantic triangle in college. Here’s the section of his post that I’d like to respond to:
“The other candidate has staked his campaign on the certification issue. While I think that issue is important, I firmly believe that there are more serious challenges to psychoanalysis today than certification and TA appointments. I believe you need a president who has the larger view and is not beholden to a vocal group that has fastened on the certification issue.”
While I consider the certification/TA link one of the prominent causes of our organization’s long-standing divisiveness, and it must be solved, I have addressed a broad range of issues affecting APsaA both on this list and my website (www.wrprocci.org or http://warrenprocci.blogspot.com). Indeed, I have staked my campaign and my differences with Drew on such significant issues as our need for diversity, for transparency, and for appropriate succession, all ways of ensuring that we hand off a robust organization to the current and subsequent generations of analysts. That is what matters most.
Yes, I am in favor of a certification process that is national and independently administered, and I believe that institutes should have autonomy in determining who will best supervise and analyze candidates. All indications are that this is a majority view (a substantial majority of 57% voted in this direction a mere two years ago), as well as a sensible, pragmatic, and progressive one. On my website, I have a section entitled ‘Goals’ in which I enumerate five overriding priorities of my presidency, if elected. Four have nothing to do with certification. In fact, even if you disagree with me about the problems of our current certification/TA link, you should consider the real significance of these other goals, before casting your vote.
In any event, the idea that I am “beholden” to a “vocal group” is not only untrue, it is way off the mark. Such stereotyped campaigning makes no sense. There are differences between the candidates for presidency, and I believe it is up to our members to decide who may or may not be “beholden” to whom.
For those of you who continue to be put off by politics as usual, I suggest that we candidates all stick to facts and issues, in this way we can all best determine the kind of leadership we need for our future.
Warren R. Procci, Candidate for President-Elect, APsaA
I am reluctant to respond directly to Drew’s recent posting to this list, but it astonished and puzzled me in ways that can’t simply be ignored. I think the last time someone referred to me as “the other” anything was when I was on the wrong side of a romantic triangle in college. Here’s the section of his post that I’d like to respond to:
“The other candidate has staked his campaign on the certification issue. While I think that issue is important, I firmly believe that there are more serious challenges to psychoanalysis today than certification and TA appointments. I believe you need a president who has the larger view and is not beholden to a vocal group that has fastened on the certification issue.”
While I consider the certification/TA link one of the prominent causes of our organization’s long-standing divisiveness, and it must be solved, I have addressed a broad range of issues affecting APsaA both on this list and my website (www.wrprocci.org or http://warrenprocci.blogspot.com). Indeed, I have staked my campaign and my differences with Drew on such significant issues as our need for diversity, for transparency, and for appropriate succession, all ways of ensuring that we hand off a robust organization to the current and subsequent generations of analysts. That is what matters most.
Yes, I am in favor of a certification process that is national and independently administered, and I believe that institutes should have autonomy in determining who will best supervise and analyze candidates. All indications are that this is a majority view (a substantial majority of 57% voted in this direction a mere two years ago), as well as a sensible, pragmatic, and progressive one. On my website, I have a section entitled ‘Goals’ in which I enumerate five overriding priorities of my presidency, if elected. Four have nothing to do with certification. In fact, even if you disagree with me about the problems of our current certification/TA link, you should consider the real significance of these other goals, before casting your vote.
In any event, the idea that I am “beholden” to a “vocal group” is not only untrue, it is way off the mark. Such stereotyped campaigning makes no sense. There are differences between the candidates for presidency, and I believe it is up to our members to decide who may or may not be “beholden” to whom.
For those of you who continue to be put off by politics as usual, I suggest that we candidates all stick to facts and issues, in this way we can all best determine the kind of leadership we need for our future.
Warren R. Procci, Candidate for President-Elect, APsaA
The Journey to Our Future
Dear Colleagues:
This is my final letter of the campaign (perhaps one or two too many for some of you, but please plow ahead at least a sentence or two).
I recently had occasion to attend an event at Ellis Island. As I walked through the Great Hall there, I thought of my grandparents and the millions of other uneducated and unsophisticated immigrants who traveled here in steerage at the start of the 20th century. What a transformation America wrought in them and their descendants, many of whom are now well established as managers, professionals, and leaders.
I found myself thinking about risks, journeys, and the power of time. Here we are a hundred years later, many of us children and grandchildren of those bold travelers. And now our venerable organization is moving into its second century too. But do we current travelers have any ideas where our psychoanalytic descendents will be three generations from now? Have we the courage our forebears had, to strike out towards a new world that can support a rich future? Can we even imagine that new world?
We all want an APsaA that is not just managing to keep afloat, but actively growing, with a membership that represents the full creativity, diversity, and ambition of the mental health and academic worlds: an APsaA that embraces, incubates, and generates ideas that enhance the vitality of psychoanalytic theory and practice; psychoanalytic institutes that are educational resources not only for analysts and (by extension) their patients, but also for the mental health community, the academy, and anyone else who is interested in self-knowledge and emotional development; thoughtful institutes whose forms of teaching build on and expand from our traditional models, exposing candidates and students of psychology everywhere to vigorous ideas and rigorous thinking; lively institutes that foster exciting and meaningful research in collaboration with other important disciplines. In short, we want future institutes that are truly centers of psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic research, with arms stretched into the communities who desperately need our ideas and practices. Great universities do this, and so do progressive governments. But, of course, by definition, there are risks.
Forgive me if this sounds self-serving, but what I think distinguishes my candidacy for president is that I do not know what forms the future will take, whereas the conservative agenda in our organization concentrates on self-preservation and self-reproduction. I do not think that will work. Nurturing a future that has value and meaning requires that we create right now the conditions under which our organization can grow and thrive. This means a wider expansion of our democratic ideals, a fuller embrace of diversity (of race, culture, theory, profession), and a greater openness of communication and exchange, all of which together provide the kind of evolutionary catalyst that keeps organizations and ideas from marginalization, fossilization and, ultimately, extinction.
I am no pollyanna here, but we are at a juncture in our history where we need some fresh air, some renewed boldness, and some hope and humility. Like any human being I don’t always rise to the expectation of my own ideals and, of course, I’ve made mistakes. But with your help and my leadership, we can all rise together and fulfill this achievable ideal of a thriving and enlightened future for our organization.
This is my final letter of the campaign (perhaps one or two too many for some of you, but please plow ahead at least a sentence or two).
I recently had occasion to attend an event at Ellis Island. As I walked through the Great Hall there, I thought of my grandparents and the millions of other uneducated and unsophisticated immigrants who traveled here in steerage at the start of the 20th century. What a transformation America wrought in them and their descendants, many of whom are now well established as managers, professionals, and leaders.
I found myself thinking about risks, journeys, and the power of time. Here we are a hundred years later, many of us children and grandchildren of those bold travelers. And now our venerable organization is moving into its second century too. But do we current travelers have any ideas where our psychoanalytic descendents will be three generations from now? Have we the courage our forebears had, to strike out towards a new world that can support a rich future? Can we even imagine that new world?
We all want an APsaA that is not just managing to keep afloat, but actively growing, with a membership that represents the full creativity, diversity, and ambition of the mental health and academic worlds: an APsaA that embraces, incubates, and generates ideas that enhance the vitality of psychoanalytic theory and practice; psychoanalytic institutes that are educational resources not only for analysts and (by extension) their patients, but also for the mental health community, the academy, and anyone else who is interested in self-knowledge and emotional development; thoughtful institutes whose forms of teaching build on and expand from our traditional models, exposing candidates and students of psychology everywhere to vigorous ideas and rigorous thinking; lively institutes that foster exciting and meaningful research in collaboration with other important disciplines. In short, we want future institutes that are truly centers of psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic research, with arms stretched into the communities who desperately need our ideas and practices. Great universities do this, and so do progressive governments. But, of course, by definition, there are risks.
Forgive me if this sounds self-serving, but what I think distinguishes my candidacy for president is that I do not know what forms the future will take, whereas the conservative agenda in our organization concentrates on self-preservation and self-reproduction. I do not think that will work. Nurturing a future that has value and meaning requires that we create right now the conditions under which our organization can grow and thrive. This means a wider expansion of our democratic ideals, a fuller embrace of diversity (of race, culture, theory, profession), and a greater openness of communication and exchange, all of which together provide the kind of evolutionary catalyst that keeps organizations and ideas from marginalization, fossilization and, ultimately, extinction.
I am no pollyanna here, but we are at a juncture in our history where we need some fresh air, some renewed boldness, and some hope and humility. Like any human being I don’t always rise to the expectation of my own ideals and, of course, I’ve made mistakes. But with your help and my leadership, we can all rise together and fulfill this achievable ideal of a thriving and enlightened future for our organization.
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