Community Vision Statement

The American Psychoanalytic Association is a community where those interested in and committed to psychoanalysis can connect, learn together, and support one another.  To that end, APsaA’s Executive Council has unanimously approved the following vision – ensuring a welcoming and positive community for all.

In the broad community it creates, APsaA provides a place to collaborate, connect, learn and find inspiration for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic clinicians, educators, scientists, researchers, scholars, students and psychoanalytic institutes, societies and centers. The APsaA community gives its members a link to psychoanalysis worldwide and a connection to one another that is essential to our members’ psychoanalytic identity and different from what they obtain locally.

Through its smaller, focused communities, APsaA fulfills members’ needs for affiliation, identification, personal connection and professional development. The Association’s communities reflect inclusivity and diversity in culture, gender, race, sexual orientation, theoretical orientation, career stage, age, geography, and discipline.

APsaA communities encourage and support innovation in psychoanalytic thinking and its relevance to the world. Anyone who has an interest in psychoanalysis can find a place to connect with the broader APsaA community.

APsaA provides diverse ways to connect so that everyone can find a place, while protecting the special place of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts.

At all times, APsaA creates professional communities that embody these guiding principles:

•  Scholarly, Educational, and Collegial
•  Diverse, Inclusive, Collaborative, and Curious
•  Compassionate, Open‐Minded, and Respectful
•  Constructive, Progressive, and Innovative
•  Supportive, Tolerant, and Encouraging of Many Points of View and Welcoming