APsaA ELECTIONS: PRESIDENT - ELECT
CAMPAIGN STATEMENTS
I want to express my deep appreciation to the nominating committee and the Council for this wholly unexpected honor and opportunity to build on the substantial work and heavy lifting done by those who have held the office before me.
APsaA has come a very long way since I first became involved as an Alternate Councilor many years ago. At that time, we were an organization preoccupied with the task of professional regulation. The sunsetting of BOPS and the externalization of regulatory functions, the establishment of the Department of Psychoanalytic Education, and the move toward local option have brought us to a different place. It’s time to orient ourselves by asking some important questions. I’d like to share some thoughts on three of them:
Who are we? Now that we have become a “membership organization” it’s incumbent on us to revisit who we are as members, and to re-evaluate what it means to have a psychoanalytic identity in this day and age. I think we can approach this question best by using the opportunity that APsaA provides to meet colleagues from around the country. This is the time to ask each other, who are you and what brought you here?
Speaking for myself, I fell in love with psychoanalysis in my early 20’s, while in therapy with a psychoanalyst who listened to me in a way I have been trying to emulate ever since.
For my entire career I’ve been a clinician. Since graduating medical school I’ve taken care of patients, young and old, in settings ranging from public hospital inpatient, community mental health centers, residential treatment centers, the VA, and the solo private practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. My career in all these settings has been guided by the ideals and ideas of Psychoanalysis.
I’ve tried to promote these ideals by getting deeply involved in psychoanalytic education through our local Society and the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, where for the last several years I served as Dean. In that role I contributed to major innovations in our curriculum and to our entry into the world of distance learning.
Where are we? Just as contemporary psychoanalysis has leaned toward the idea that each analytic pair is unique, expressing the history and subjectivity of two people engaged in a unique process, APsaA’s identity is inextricably entwined with our American terroir. A major goal of our Association should be to demonstrate our service to America and our local communities by directing our attention and efforts to some of the problems we share as citizens. Specific areas that call to me include:
Public Health: the greatest obstacle to addressing many problems in public health is disavowal of the problems themselves. Resistance and disavowal are the meat and potatoes (or tofu, if you prefer) of psychoanalysis.
Child Advocacy: One of our greatest and under-acknowledged resources is what we have learned about children, and what Child Analysts can contribute. One of our greatest Public Health problems remains what Elisabeth Young-Bruehl called “Childism,” a powerful current of prejudice against children that contributes to transgenerational trauma that seems to be a renewable resource.
Health Care: It’s clear that the care in “health care” is under siege. The doctor-patient relationship has been undermined in ways that affect us all, encompassing our struggles on behalf of our own patients, and our experience as patients. Psychoanalysts should be an important voice on behalf of the importance of relationships and caring in Health Care.
Mental Health: While related to the above, this deserves special mention. We need to direct our research and clinical acumen to addressing and demonstrating our contribution to specific mental health problems. Addictions and PTSD are but two examples. Neuropsychoanalysis holds promise as a way to keep ourselves scientifically honest and to contribute to the neuroscientific understanding of mental illness that promise to leave the DSM’s behind.
The Hard Problem—Race: I thought long and hard about mentioning this, because it is such a hard problem to face. But the contradiction between American ideals and realities in the area of race relations continues to burden us as a nation. We should be contributing to the national dialogue in this area.
Where are we going? The biggest problem facing APsaA is a decreasing membership. This is largely a matter of members aging out of the dues paying category. We need to bring in younger members by demonstrating what we have to offer to Institutes, Societies, and individuals.
I believe that directing our attentions outward will enhance our profile as an organization and enhance the meaning and value of being identified with Psychoanalysis. And a vital ApsaA where we can learn and connect enhances our ability to be helpful to others. Showing up and showing who we are will carry more weight than making claims about how special we are.
I believe that freedom of choice and responsibility are fundamental psychoanalytic precepts, and that such choices come upon us at each moment. So I hope in the coming election you will choose me.
Neal Spira
reports no ethics findings, malpractice actions, or licensing board actions.
It is my privilege to run for the office of President-elect of APsaA. When the Nominations Committee reached out to me about considering this, I was honored and flattered. But I also knew that it was a sign of the times: while my credentials seem standard enough, my background makes me an unusual candidate. I have spent most of the past two decades not in clinical practice, but serving as an advisor to leaders and boards in a wide range of organizations. I hope you will come to share my belief that my experience could serve APsaA well at this critical juncture in its history. This is a time when we must adapt to cultural change and make meaningful contributions to the wider public discourse, while tending to the evolving needs of our members.
My training and experience as a psychoanalyst informs everything I do, including my work as a consultant to business leaders, my own leadership roles in the human rights world and in my 21 years as the founder and managing principal of a psychoanalytic consulting group, and my personal role as a concerned citizen.
My interest in leadership goes back to childhood. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a child of Holocaust survivors. My parents weren’t well-educated or sophisticated, but they encouraged me to study and to care about injustice. I grew up reading biographies of leaders, searching for answers to how they got large groups of people to do bad things. In college and medical school, I was exposed to psychoanalysis, first as literary criticism, then as a theory of personality, and finally, in residency, as a patient and analytic candidate. I also had an entrepreneurial streak, gravitated towards leadership roles, and discovered that I wasn’t temperamentally suited to being in full-time practice. I stumbled into business, and the intersection of psychoanalysis and leadership eventually became my life’s work.
In “The Question of Lay Analysis”, Freud wrote that “the use of analysis for the treatment of the neuroses is only one of its applications; the future will perhaps show that it is not the most important one.” While I believe treating patients will remain at the heart of what most analysts do, I also believe that psychoanalysis is wonderful training to do other things—including helping, and being, leaders—and agree that other applications may be vital to the future of our field. I have written about these issues in a chapter on “The neglect of leadership in psychoanalysis” in a recent book, “Progress in Psychoanalysis: Envisioning the Future of the Profession”, which I would be happy to share with any of you.
My primary aim as President-elect, and then President, would be the elevation of psychoanalysis to intellectual, cultural and clinical prominence, as a way of helping make sense of the world, bringing about social change, and informing a range of therapeutic approaches to alleviating suffering, from psychoanalysis to psychoanalytic psychotherapies to neuro-psychoanalysis. My vision for APsaA is that it should open its doors wider, actively embrace greater diversity in every sense (lest our lack of it becomes our Achilles’ heel), and focus on serving all of our members. On the spectrum of psychoanalytic politics, I would situate myself to the progressive left, although without compromising fundamental principles and values that are core to the field.
Over the coming months, I will offer proposals on issues that concern us, including declining membership numbers and the need to recruit new trainees; the economic strain psychoanalysts experience in their practices, and financial challenges we face as an association; burdens of running psychoanalytic institutes and centers; APsaA’s evolving governance structure; flagging organizational morale; creative advocacy, outreach and public relations; cooperation with other psychoanalytic groups; and supporting treatment for children and families, along with vital research initiatives. I would welcome your input and feedback.
I also want to work to amplify the great strengths and values of our membership, individually and collectively. As a member of the recent Task Force on Governance, and last year as Chair of the Search Committee to recruit our new Executive Director, I gained a deeper immersion in the life of our Association through conversations with many of you who shared your aspirations for APsaA and for our profession as a whole. I don’t have all the answers, but together we can build a better psychoanalytic future. For now, I am grateful to have this opportunity to run for election, and look forward to engaging with you in listening, learning and collaborating on behalf of the people we serve and the work we love.
Kerry J. Sulkowicz
reports no ethics findings, malpractice actions, or licensing board actions.
APsaA ELECTIONS: TREASURER
Our Association is in need of strong leadership and a coherent vision of what we aspire to achieve as an organization representing the profession and science of psychoanalysis. Making an impact in our patients’ lives, our society and the global community requires a vision that will serve to guide our decisions about how we allocate our financial resources. The reorganization has freed our energies to focus our efforts on the important initiatives that will help us promote psychoanalysis but we must ensure the future of the profession by protecting the long-term financial stability of our Association. The Association is facing a significant decline in revenue as we continue to experience a decrease in the number of active members along with an increase in the number of dues exempt senior members. By 2020, the number of senior members is projected to surpass the number of active dues paying members by almost half resulting in increasing reductions in dues income which is a major source of our Association’s revenue. As members we must take action to address these inevitable fiscal realities. I welcome the opportunity to serve our members as the next Treasurer of the Association in our efforts to confront these fiscal challenges. We must remedy our declining revenues with thoughtful planning and an ounce of prevention.
The remedy to ensure our long term financial security and the viability of our cherished professional home will require that we make difficult decisions now to ensure our tomorrow. Many of us are wedded to the way things have always been done with little thought on the financial cost to our Association. The yearly spring meeting continues to incur significant losses that the Association absorbs as a “member benefit” for those fewer members who attend every year (relative to the attendance at the traditional winter meetings in New York City). We need to reevaluate our current meetings structure and consider moving to one annual meeting per year as many of the major professional associations are currently doing. One annual meeting will ensure even a larger attendance and allow our efforts to be concentrated on ensuring a high quality scientific meeting and attendee experience. We can also study the cost-benefit analysis of moving to more local regional meetings and to producing high quality webinars that will allow more of our members to attend innovative programs without incurring the costs of lost productivity. These webinars can serve to generate more revenue for the Association as we can scale these educational activities to those mental health clinicians who are interested in furthering their education but are unable to attend our national meetings.
If we are suffering from the financial impact of our declining membership, we must focus on enhancing our membership experience so that we can retain our current members by delivering high quality educational experiences, a professional home of supportive colleagues and friends, and continue to ensure the added value of membership by protecting access to low-cost malpractice insurance. We also need to focus our efforts on strengthening our Institutes, Societies and Centers to ensure we continue to attract the best and the brightest into our educational programs. The future of our Association and our profession is with our candidates so that we must ensure that psychoanalysis remains a viable profession and an evidence-based method of treatment par excellence. We need to put our efforts behind rebuilding bridges with the academic community, and in strengthening our scientific basis. We need to focus our efforts to rebrand ourselves in a changing marketplace that thinks that psychoanalysis is a thing of the past. The Association must take the lead in fostering the spirit of innovation necessary to thrive in the 21st Century!
On a personal note, I have served the Association for over 20 years since I first became a candidate member when I started my analytic training in 1998. As a candidate, I served for four years as president-elect and president of our national candidates organization, which provided me with a wealth of experience along with offering me a long term perspective on our Association’s history and challenges. I have been serving on the Executive Council for the past nine years as the representative from the Florida Psychoanalytic Center and I was recently elected by our Board of Director’s to represent the Council on our Executive Committee. I share a strong working relationship with our current leadership including our current Treasurer Bill Myerson whom I have had the pleasure of serving in my role as a member of our Association’s Finance Committee.
As Treasurer of the Association, I vow to be prudent in all matters related to ensuring the long-term financial health of our Association. I hope you will share in my vision for our Association and put your support behind my candidacy for Treasurer.
Julio G. Calderon
reports no ethics findings, malpractice actions, or licensing board actions.
I am seeking your support for my candidacy to succeed Bill Myerson as Treasurer of our Association.
I worked with Dr. Myerson and the Executive Committee as Council Representative from 2011 until June 2018. In that capacity I have participated in many of the broad changes that APsaA has implemented in recent years. I believe that the changes for increased local autonomy, externalization of regulation, and the clarification of the Executive Council’s role as the Board of Directors have been especially important. The launch of the Department of Psychoanalytic Education is going well. The function of the new Institute Requirements and Review Committee is developing as additional training programs seek to join us. It has been a pleasure to work with colleagues to promote these advances for APsaA. We are currently reaping the benefits of having moved to One APsaA.
As Treasurer I will strive to maintain transparent communication, the active involvement of the entire membership, and a businesslike approach to the financial management of our Association.
Several financial concerns are currently active:
Memberships rolls: our rules concerning membership dues cause APsaA to lose revenue as our aging members move to a non-paying status. The Bylaw Amendment was passed in June giving Executive Council authority over dues and criteria for senior membership. This change will give Executive Council a chance to change our dues structure in a way that will reduce APsaA’s loss of income as our members age.
It is critical that our overall membership needs to grow. It is time to revise our Strategic Plan in a way that will address this core problem. Part of the solution will be strengthening our interactive alliances with affiliated Societies and Institutes. The recent Bylaw change making candidates full members of APsaA is one step in the right direction.
The June meeting is well recognized to lose money each year. This fact becomes more pressing as our budget has grown tighter. A task force is underway to review the structure of our meetings and recommend changes. We have begun to explore using on-line Zoom meetings to allow Council to maintain active involvement in between face to face meetings.
As Chair of the Finance Committee, I will sustain the increasing involvement in receiving budget requests and drafting proposed allocation of funds through the budget. Starting in FY2020, the Finance Committee will be tracking expenditures along with the Executive Committee through quarterly reports.
The management of APsaA’s Reserve Fund deserves ongoing attention. The performance of our investments over the past decade has been strong. This has allowed the use of some investment revenues in funding our priorities. While we have been able to cover operating deficits without losing net worth to date, a consideration of how to use our investment income will be presented to Executive Council in February 2020.
With your endorsement, I will be well prepared to assume the role of Treasurer for APsaA. Important preparatory experiences include service on Executive Council since 2006, service on Executive Committee 2011 to 2018, Chair of the Audit Committee 2009 to 2019, and member of the Finance Committee beginning 2019. It will be a pleasure to serve APsaA through this role in managing its finances with transparency and in a way that strengthens the future of our Association and of psychoanalysis.
I will welcome contacts from members wishing to discuss any questions or concerns.
Peter G. Kotcher
reports no ethics findings, malpractice actions, or licensing board actions.
APsaA ELECTIONS: COUNCILOR - AT - LARGE
If re-elected as Councilor-at-Large, I will be able to continue working on the Executive Council on activities in which I participate. I am a member of the IRRC, whose function is to review Societies’ membership applications to APsaA. Executive Councilors are responsible for approval of training standards, expanding membership, accepting new psychoanalytic groups and individual psychoanalysts to enrich and embolden our group with an influx of interested and talented new members.
I was recently asked to serve on a Task Force on Psychotherapy Membership. I support the creation of a formal category of psychotherapy membership in APsaA and will help to work out the details of membership and bylaw changes to allow this to come to a vote of the membership. With at least 44 groups of adult and child/adolescent psychotherapy programs in APsaA, we need to encourage future psychotherapist members and collaboration between students and practitioners of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. We need to work to unite groups that remain isolated from psychoanalysis, including undergraduate students, medical students, psychologist, social work and counseling trainees, researchers, professors, psychotherapists, and academics. A strong APsaA is a united APsaA.
I have also recently joined a study group on Distance Learning in APsaA and am curious to learn more about the effect of DL on psychoanalytic training during coursework, supervision, and analysis. The Executive Council will be discussing DL in regard to groups applying for membership in APsaA.
APsaA has gone through many changes in the last 3 years causing movement and shifting of the form and structure of the organization. Our new structure of the DPE provides the lattice supporting the educational and consultation groups that are establishing liaisons to our local groups. The DPE will strengthen our connections with our institutes, help improve psychoanalytic training programs, and support local research. It is important to create a caring and respectful atmosphere of consultation and collaboration that trickles down to our local groups and makes it easier for institutes to ask for help and for psychoanalysts to access personal help as needed.
I will work to support those conditions critical to the survival of psychoanalysis. Through advocacy, we have been able to rapidly mobilize responses to issues in the media, i.e. violence and guns, to health and political issues concerning human rights, mental suffering, the rights of our patients, the right to receive mental health treatment of children, adolescents, and adults without discrimination. APsaA needs a strong membership to help build a more resilient APsaA.
Sally J. Rosenberg
reports no ethics findings, malpractice actions, or licensing board actions.
Our organization is in the midst of a time of change, with reconsideration of its finances and priorities. We are diligently working on how best to meet the needs of our members, and to continue to establish our place in the Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Therapy World. I have had the honor of being your Councilor at-large, on the Board of Trustees, for eight years and I humbly ask you to return me to office, for another term of 4 years, representing the wishes and needs of all of you, across geography and local membership societal affiliations. I will continue to follow in the footsteps of my inspirations, mentors and predecessors, Mike Leavitt and Mel Mandel. While representing all of you, I promise to keep a close watch on the needs of the Western Centers/Societies (San Diego, New Center, San Francisco, Portland Seattle, Denver, Phoenix-Tucson).
I have continued my awareness and administrative education at New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, as a member of our Research Committee (and DPE branch under the able leadership of Drs. Goodman and Eagle), and Senior Faculty in our Psychoanalytic Institute, Psychodynamic Training Division and Extention Division. I have been active in setting policy for our Member Assistance Committee and its efforts.
Nationally, I have been the Chair of our Honorary Membership Committee, an active member of our Nominations Committee, the MRRC, and Policy and Procedures Committee. These have been invaluable opportunities to get to know the process by which progress gets made, “things get done”, and to interface with colleagues of other viewpoints with their own histories of experience. I will continue to responsibly devote time and attention to all matters coming before Council and to give all of you my best efforts, consideration and thought.
We remain the most important Psychoanalytic membership organization in the United States, trying to maintain an outlook for the Mental Health and Health services for our analysands, clients, patients, members and the national need, in these times, for a voice for the disenfranchised and struggling of our country and society.
We must support our societies, implement better ways for our members to establish themselves in their communities and for us to be of value to our members in these challenging times for mental health priorities. I will be on the front lines looking out for all of you. Thanks.
Jeffrey K. Seitelman
reports no ethics findings, malpractice actions, or licensing board actions.
We have entered a new and exciting era within APsaA with new departments having been established with leaders being hard-at work in their new positions. Let us assure that we do not inadvertently recreate some of the same problems that we hoped to solve by externalizing regulatory functions. At the same time, we must not devalue the unique talents and potential contributions of our members who hold more conservative viewpoints as we move forward in implementing, what many refer to as “progressive” goals.
If elected Councilor-at-Large, I shall continue to remain open to thoughtfully considering a range of opinions and options, respectfully discussing them and coming to consensus if possible.
APsaA faces some important challenges; declining-and-aging membership, and concurrent financial challenges. Over the past year the Executive Council (Board of Directors, BOD) and Executive Committee have made significant progress toward meeting these, yet there is more to do toward assuring long-term viability and financial stability. We have many reasons to be confident in reaching our goals. Toward this end, I favor a bylaw change to expand membership to those trained in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
We psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, researchers, and academicians have the collective ability to continue to make important contributions to clinical practice, theoretical development, and to the society at-large. I believe it is important for APsaA to speak out publicly regarding social and ethical issues of the day. These endeavors not only have the potential for changing the public discourse, as well as keep relevant psychoanalytic understandings in the public view. It may be important to join with other like-minded professional organizations in some of these endeavors.
My nine years on the BOD representing the Atlanta Psychoanalytic Society, elected membership on the Executive Committee, two terms on the Membership Requirements and Review Committee, Policies and Procedures Committee, and Chair of the Policies and Procedures Committee have allowed me a broad understanding of the issues facing APsaA.
I welcome questions and comments of all the members, especially those without a local home society.
M. Jane Yates
reports no ethics findings, malpractice actions, or licensing board actions.
I am delighted to be nominated for APsaA Councilor-at-Large. At a time when we as individuals and as a collective must navigate particularly complicated, promising and fraught times in our profession and in the world, I’m aware of the heft and potential in this chance to serve the larger membership.
As an active member of Berkshire Psychoanalytic Institute, a small, relatively new association in rural Massachusetts and of Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute and Society, a long-established, historically-rich group in New Haven, I bring organizational experience and understanding well-suited to today’s urgent opportunities and challenges.
During my time as BPI’s representative, I have been impressed by the Council’s commitment to a chorus of voices in order to compose a productive leadership conversation and move our profession and organization forward. We are a diverse, dynamic group, united in our desire to serve our community, the world, and ourselves.
I serve on the Institute Requirements and Review Committee (IRRC) where work on evolving standards and conversations with independent institutes seeking a place under the APsaA tent underscores the relevance, appeal and applicability of our organization. Questions about rigorous training, about distance training and analysis, efforts to increase membership and render membership—as well as psychoanalytic education, thought, research and practice—more palpably germane to a larger swath of clinicians are powerfully in the air.
Nationally, I am a member of the Social Issues Department’s Committee on the Status of Women and Girls; the DPE’s Diversities Section; and the COPE Study Group on New Technologies. I co-chaired the study group on remote psychoanalysis and fantasy and presented in a number of discussion groups and panels at the Winter and Spring meetings, including last February’s Special Symposium: Agency, The Complexities of Desire and #METOO in HBO’S “The Tale”.
Locally, I have served on BPI’s EC and Board, on the Austen Riggs Center affiliate faculty, as board member and past president of the local chapter of APA Division 39, and former board member of the Center for the Study of Groups and Social Systems, the Boston affiliate of A.K. Rice Institute. I am active in several study, reading and supervision groups.
Last November, I wrote a well-received piece on sexual assault, power and the #MeToo movement for Psychoanalysis UnPlugged. Before turning my attention and professional intentions to psychoanalysis, I studied for my PhD in English and American Literature, wrote fiction, and authored and contributed to books on health, mental health, development and women’s issues. These days, I live and work in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Lyn Yonack
reports no ethics findings, malpractice actions, or licensing board actions.
APsaA ELECTIONS: CANDIDATE COUNCILOR - AT - LARGE
I am honored to be nominated for the position of Candidate Councilor-at-Large on the Executive Council. Growing up, New Delhi, India was always ‘headquarters’ however I spent a few years in Bangladesh as a toddler, resided in London for my latency years and graduated high school from Moscow. I believe this exposure to diversity has made a tremendous impact on me and I spend each day honing and integrating the lessons I have learnt in this process. I went to medical school at Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi and learnt that a spoonful of creativity, curiosity and playfulness makes the solemnity of medical training go down.
I moved to Minneapolis, MN for my psychiatry residency and my Child Psychiatry fellowship, where I learnt about the ubiquitous tenacity and fragility of childhood. Now, I live in Milwaukee, WI where I am an assistant professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin. I cherish the ‘tripartite’ role of serving as a clinician to my patients, a teacher to my fellows, residents and medical students, and a candidate at Minnesota Psychoanalytic Institute. I have had direct experience with long distance analysis as well as long distance candidacy.
I also serve as the editor of the APsaA newsletter Candidate Connection. While the candidacy has helped me immerse into the intrapsychic and interpersonal aspects of psychoanalytic training, the newsletter and APsaA have helped me understand many of the local, national and global systems issues related to psychoanalysis.
I believe we are at a very important juncture in the timeline of psychoanalysis. There are issues being discussed that will affect generations to come—frequency of sessions, the role of training analysts, the role of a Progressions Committee, the role of distance learning (to name a few).
Over the last 17 years, these 3 questions have helped me navigate the complex landscape of psychiatry: (1) What is the medication for? (2) Is it doing what it’s supposed to be doing? (3) If not, why is it still being prescribed?” I plan on keeping these same 3 questions in mind as I listen to the complex issues being raised in the Executive Council. A successful methodology involves the balance of respecting the past and reading the present, so we may plan the future. I promise to try and bring the best version of myself to the table at APsaA, and I hope you will deem me ‘good enough’ for your trust and your vote.
Himanshu Agrawal
reports no ethics findings, malpractice actions, or licensing board actions.
I am honored to be nominated for Candidate Councilor-at-Large. I’ve been following with interest the various opinions and proposals concerning the multiple possible self-states of APsaA moving forward regarding membership, analytic training, inclusivity, community outreach, research, lobbying, marketing & social media, presence in higher educational institutions, and more. An important aspect of this endeavor is drawing on the experience, knowledge, creativity, and vision of our members, including our candidate members.
I believe I am in an advantageous position to help with this endeavor, as I am actively involved in APsaA, IPA/IPSO, and The New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. I also have experience in leadership, having spent 20 years as an Air Force officer, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 2012. I am currently the Treasurer of the APsaA Candidates’ Council, which puts me in a unique position to have my finger on the pulse of the candidate membership and to represent the views of our candidates on the Executive Council.
Our candidates have important and timely perspectives on factors that affect the appeal and reach of psychoanalytic training, along with creative ideas on how to expand both. This is important information that can be useful in growing our membership and the reach of psychoanalytic thought. The challenge is to create a more efficient and comprehensive way of gathering that information. Another important perspective our candidates bring is familiarity with the ever-widening field of psychotherapeutic treatments, many of which borrow from psychoanalytic thought. This could enrich the discussion of outreach and collaborative possibilities as we contemplate the future of psychoanalysis. In short, there are many important and useful perspectives our candidates can contribute to the discussion of where we are heading.
Perhaps the most valuable benefit of being a candidate member is the opportunity to learn from the vast experience and knowledge of our APsaA analysts. I think it’s important to consider establishing more opportunities and defined pathways for candidates to learn from them. While the annual meetings provide some excellent opportunities, there are many more opportunities to be explored that can be had without travelling. Possibilities include involving analysts with candidates in online study groups, online group supervision sessions, or pairing up to lead in-person or online presentations, to name just a few.
These are just a few of my thoughts to illustrate my approach to the challenge of enhancing the relationship and flow of information between candidates and analysts in APsaA. I hope this is helpful in understanding the perspective and some of the ideas I would bring as Candidate Councilor-at-Large.
Gerard Sobnosky
reports no ethics findings, malpractice actions, or licensing board actions.