ThePurchaseofNPAP’sNewHomeat40West13thStreet
by Paul Kaiser
While NPAP members and candidates have been enjoying our beautiful and functional location at 40 West 13th Street since 2010, many of our newer members may not appreciate the rather arduous path that led us to our current location.
In the early 2000’s we completed a much-needed extensive renovation of our beloved brownstone at 150 West 13th Street, a building much loved for its charm as well as its history. However, several factors made it clear that we could not enjoy this renovated space for long. Not only had the renovation stretched our financial resources, but the project of building a ramp to make the building disability accessible was unwieldy and expensive, and an elevator was out of the question in this narrow structure. In addition, the new 2006 New York State licensing law required that psychoanalytic candidates see their patients on the premises of the psychoanalytic institute. Our charming building was much too small to accommodate this need. So, the question of NPAP’s future location loomed large.
Fortuitously, and out of nowhere, we were contacted by a representative of our neighbor, the City and Country School, who expressed an interest in buying our building. They were offering $4 million, an amount that we knew would be insufficient to get us into a space large enough to fit our needs. Over the next few weeks, as a result of intense negotiations, their offer went up to $9 million and the NPAP Boards approved the sale.
Over the next few months, we spent many hours working with brokers to find a space that would work for us. When they showed us the property at 40 West 13th Street we were not impressed. It was a weird wedge-shaped space filled with hanging wires, no useable windows, and a rather decrepit interior; but the size was ample and the location was ideal. We were advised that a total reconstruction of this raw space was possible and could work wonders. The owner was asking $5.5 million. We negotiated and eventually agreed on a purchase price of $4.1 million.
The deal that was eventually worked out was that the City and Country School gave us a bridge loan to purchase 40 West 13th Street and get the reconstruction done by a set date to avoid a penalty fee. The only glitch was that we were “homeless” for several months during this transition and had to hold our Board meetings at another NYC psychoanalytic institute, and rent space there for our candidates to see patients. Nevertheless, the build-out proceeded well under the direction of a Board-designated Ad Hoc Building Committee consisting of Paul Kaiser, Sherman Pheiffer, Penny Rosen, Carl Weinberg, and Joe Kruft as the MITO Rep. We hired project managers - Works-In-Progress Associates (WPA), who oversaw the design, demolition, and build-out of our offices within the time allotted. The cost was approximately $4 million.
With the collaboration of WPA we began the reconstruction process by vetting architectural firms. Jacob Alspecter impressed us with his incorporation of key psychoanalytic concepts in his proposal. He read up on concepts like the holding environment, unconscious processes, and free association and translated them into design features that support a sense of infinity by being open to light coming into rooms from the outside, balancing openness and a sense of safety along with non-arbitrary nor non-restrictive boundaries. The entire layout of our treatment rooms is designed to create an impression of movement through the space. There are many other subtle architectural and engineering innovations that enabled us to get maximum practical usage out of our space while embodying basic psychoanalytic principles.
And finally, after the completion of the sale, the purchase, the build-out, and the moving, we were able to put $900,000 into our reserve fund. We are pleased to report that since our move, we have been enjoying an environment that more comfortably fits our growing needs for meeting rooms and office space.
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MITO LicensureanditsEffectsonCandidates
by Joyce Rosenberg
The advent of New York state licensure for psychoanalysts created uncertainty and anxiety for NPAP candidates. Governor George Pataki signed the licensure bill into law in December 2002 and the first licenses were issued in 2005. It was literally years before we would learn whether we would be able to be licensed, and if not, whether we would be allowed to continue to practice.
Under the NPAP training program that had been in place for decades, candidates who did not have licenses as doctors, psychologists, social workers or nurses could not begin to see patients until they had passed all the courses at the 600 level and the matriculation exam. But once all those requirements were met, we were able to start a practice, set our own fees and be paid directly by patients for our hours and work out of our own offices.
Some candidates had been in practice for many years. With no answers forthcoming, MITO and candidates at other institutes lobbied with the state, hoping to preserve the ability of those in private practice to continue their work.
Unfortunately, candidates learned that some NPAP members including some Board members did not believe candidates should be licensed. It was a long-held belief among many analysts that one didn’t become a psychoanalyst until they had completed their full training; candidates were not supposed to call themselves psychoanalysts until they had graduated.
But that all began to change as the Department of Education created a formula under which candidates, if they met requirements for courses taken and a minimum number of patient hours, could be grandparented into their licenses. Those who didn’t meet those requirements would have to give up their independent practices and offices and work under the supervision and auspices of NPAP.
At that point, members began working with candidates to try to be sure as many as possible could get their licenses. Sadly, about 10 candidates who had started their practices could not.
The fight for licensure among candidates rightfully dominated the MITO agenda for months. And as candidates began to one by one receive their licenses, several began monitoring the Department of Education website daily, even hourly. As soon as the site showed another new licensee, a MITO member would call the lucky colleague with good news and congratulations. The state was so backed up with applications from psychoanalysts at all levels of experience that Department of Education employees were listing licenses on Saturday mornings – bringing an unexpected and welcome phone call to another newly qualified psychoanalyst.
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ThePandemic
By Robin Berg and Monique Rinere
Jan Roth held down the fort as MITO chair during the onset of the pandemic. In June 2020 we, Robin Berg and Monique Rinere, were elected as the first co-chairs of MITO. We promised each other that we would aim to remain friends and communicate with minimal trailing edge-projection, in exchange for being able to share the chair load. Each of us had each been involved with MITO for years, taking turns running for and sitting on various committees and executive roles. We both mostly enjoyed being involved in MITO. The occasional grumbles and long meetings were a small price to pay for being able to keep an ear to the ground and advocate for candidate interests.
Once it became clear that the pandemic was not vanishing anytime soon, our candidate community changed. We were all dispersed into our homes, fearing contaminants and defending against fears of mortality, while attempting to maintain holding environments for our patients, despite no longer sharing a physical environment with them or each other. Suddenly we desperately missed our tiny clinic rooms, previously objects of occasional complaints and stress. It is not hyperbole to say that we didn’t know if we would ever return, or what would become of psychoanalysis.
In this fog, we kept on with our MITO meetings. We got good at Zoom, and fast. Send link. Mute upon entry. Enable waiting room. But uncertainties abounded. Could our patients accidentally join each others’ sessions, as if they were bursting into an office ahead of their session time? Were our sessions hackable, HIPAA-compliant, recordable? Our supervisors and teachers were learning this along with us, so our early discussions together were invaluable. We started offering casual weekly socials on Fridays, eventually dubbing them Zoomtinis, a reference whose origin is lost to the fog, but perhaps it was an actual cocktail? A strong one, no doubt. We vented, plotted, laughed, cried, stared at each other over awkward silences and lamented the lack of eye contact in cyberspace. We learned to talk one at a time.
We also attempted to break down the various ways that this new method of communicating with our patients was or was not psychoanalysis. Freud took walks with his patients, and even brought his dog into the room, so was it okay if our cat jumped onto the screen or our pandemic puppy was lounging in the background? When our children burst into view during a session, potentially contaminating the transference, how to repair the intrusion? Was it a boundary violation when a patient dragged her boyfriend into the camera to force a triangulation, or did we simply have to be more easygoing about it because she was, after all, sharing a studio apartment with him? And how could we continue to care for our analytic selves and each other so that we could be of any use to our patients, when no one knows what is going on or how it will end?
NPAP kept going, and MITO kept going. We fumbled through virtual reality, kept our top halves tidy, and did our best to provide ways for candidates to stay connected with each other. We took advantage of what Zoom provided, and held programming with teachers and speakers logging in from all over the country. The Theodor Reik Guest Lectureship drew luminaries like Orna Guralnik and David Marriott, and built our bank account to previously unheard-of heights. After all, we had little to spend it on. We kept candidate interests vibrantly present as NPAP navigated an entirely new organizational structure. We helped each other navigate the Sisyphean path to LP licensure. We voted and took minutes, formed committees, and abandoned committees. We lost some people tragically and without warning, with only virtual hugs for comfort. Though we kept tabs on each other, it was never enough. But we are still here, and MITO is still here.
With endless gratitude to the candidates who volunteered their time, skills, and cathexis to keep MITO going.
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ThePractice-BasedPsychodynamicLearningCenter
by Art Pomponio
The Practice-Based Psychodynamic Learning Center (PPLC) was established by NPAP’s Board of Directors in 2016. The idea of creating a psychotherapy program had been in the air for several years. Some members believed that this kind of training at a psychoanalytic institute was inappropriate, while others saw it as valuable both for students and for NPAP. The idea of adding a new revenue stream to strengthen NPAP’s financial standing also held appeal to some. When people interested in getting it off the ground finally came together, the board quickly and decisively authorized its founding. Generous funds were provided, consultants were hired, and within a year we were up-and-running.
PPLC’s mission is to train mental health practitioners with non-analytic training backgrounds in psychodynamic psychotherapy, and to help them establish or develop their practices. Our students have included social workers, clinical psychologists, counseling psychologists, marriage and family therapists, psychiatrists, and creative arts therapists. Anyone with a license in a mental health field may apply. The program is entirely digital and has served students from across the country and around the world.
The members of the PPLC committee are Neil Herlands, Paul Kaiser, Sue Mitchell, and Art Pomponio, who has directed the program from the beginning. Michael De Simone joined the group in recent years. All committee members also teach in the program along with past and present instructors John Bliss, Edgard Francisco Danielsen, Douglas Maxwell, Ruth Rosenberg, Michael Spier, Claire Steinberger, and Susan Tye.
The committee articulated PPLC’s mission and developed its curriculum. The board supported them enthusiastically. From the start, this program has accented clinical concerns while being fully grounded in analytic theory. We want prospective students to understand how the program can help them form and develop their clinical work. We speak of using the therapeutic relationship clinically rather than understanding and using the transference and countertransference, for example.
To earn a certificate, students must successfully complete five clinically oriented courses that are academic in nature (the program is designed to be completed in one year, but students may progress at their own pace). These are: Developing Psychodynamic Listening Skills; Psychodynamic Diagnosis (which helps students translate more familiar DSM-5 diagnoses into dynamic language and conceptualizations); Using the Therapeutic Relationship in Clinical Practice; Infant Development and Attachment; and Meeting and Keeping Patients.
Another requirement, unique to PPLC, includes three Psychodynamic Case Presentation and Supervision courses. Here, students present clinical vignettes and receive supervision from a member of the faculty. During the process of presenting cases, students will receive support in applying the core concepts presented in the more academic courses.
And finally, students take three two-hour workshops on such topics as addiction, working with couples, integrating spirituality in clinical practice, and working with dreams. The courses and workshops provide Continuing Education Units for all interested New York State licensed practitioners.
The future of the program feels bright. We have just launched an online outreach initiative to attract new students. And soon, the committee will begin planning an advanced course of study that will dive deeper into the various approaches of contemporary psychoanalysis (self-psychology, object relations and relational, contemporary Freudian, etc.).
The committee thanks the NPAP board, administration, and community for its ongoing support of this vibrant training program.
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RacialJusticeInitiative
by Beverly Schneider
Having evolved in reaction to the tragic murder of George Floyd (May, 2020) and many others, the Racial Justice Initiative became an official ad hoc committee of the Association in November of that year. We are members, candidates, and staff working to develop various programs to help NPAP as a whole and its members as individuals to address the systemic racism, in its various manifestations, at NPAP. We have offered to the community a relevant-book discussion series and a sequence of educational Zoom meetings, approximately fifteen newsletters and counting. By November 2020, we had collected over $20,000 to fund the Good Trouble Scholarship for incoming candidates of African descent. We are developing some inservice, community-organizing programs as well as a panel on White/White analytic dyads.
Recently, we have inaugurated an in-depth study of race in the long history of the Psychoanalytic Review. This ambitious endeavor is headed up by Member-in-Training Anaís Martinez Jimenez. Since its foundation in 1913 as the first psychoanalytic journal published in the United States and the first in the world printed in the English language, it has played a fundamental role in the development, interpretation, and dissemination of psychoanalytic ideas throughout the history of the field. In 1958, the Review became the official journal of NPAP. It continues to be one of the most influential journals in the promotion of psychoanalytic content for analytic practitioners, academics, artists, and the lay public.
This project, Race in the Psychoanalytic Review, is a long-term project and we hope to present periodic reviews of our findings. As analysts, we understand that it is only through rigorously exploring our history
through acknowledging it head on – that we can truly evolve into a socially conscientious institute, committed to the betterment of all humankind.
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LicensureandtheRoadtoIndependentPsychoanalysis
By James Holmes
On June 29th, 2022, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation that expanded the scope of practice of New York State Licensed Psychoanalysts (LPs) (and Licensed Mental Health Counselors [LMHCs] and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists [LMFTs]). The legislation gave these three licenses the ability to diagnose and develop treatment-based assessment plans. Following the implementation of this law no more will medicine, psychology, and social work be able to claim superiority over independent psychoanalysis in terms of training. This has been a 20-year struggle – since the original licensing legislation was passed in 2002 – to establish parity with the other mental health professions. As this is being written, the New York State Education Department is working out regulations for implementing this privilege and we eagerly await further information.
The original journey towards licensure of independent psychoanalysts has been well documented by others.* NPAP, since its founding in 1948, along with NAAP (National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis), founded in 1972, have been instrumental in this journey.
As is well known, there is a historical wish by some practitioners in control to limit other practitioners from engaging in clinical practice, starting with Theodor Reik’s exclusion – first in Vienna and then in New York
because he was a psychologist and not a medical doctor. Reik’s quest for inclusion prompted Freud to write The Question of Lay Analysis in 1927. The medical opposition in New York State to clinicians who are not medically trained is long-standing and, eventually, psychologists and social workers joined the opposition, wanting to limit mental health practice to those practitioners who had clinical degrees.
Of course, as we know, the institute training at NPAP has rigorous standards, which include a master’s degree to be accepted into the training. NPAP has always welcomed candidates from many disciplines, not only clinical disciplines. Those who continue to argue that a clinical training is a prerequisite to psychoanalytic training miss an important point: those with training in the social sciences, arts, and education among other fields come to training with important experience that clinical trainings can’t generally claim particularly the experience of metaphor and paradox.
The labeling of psychoanalysts who do not possess clinical degrees has also evolved over time. Originally described as “lay” analysts or “non-tri-discipline” analysts, the term Independent Psychoanalysts has supplanted either of these descriptions as more appropriate. Rather than being defined by what we are not – non-tri-discipline – or that we are not trained – lay – the term “Independent Psychoanalysis” signals directly that we have been trained independently of the clinical disciplines of medicine, psychology, and social work.
The passage of New York State legislation in 2002 that established psychoanalysis as an independent profession came after strategic negotiations. The law established the LP license, changed the psychology license from a general license to a scope of practice license, and gave social work a scope of practice license. In exchange for the LP license, the tri-disciplines insisted the LP be established as a lower-level license than those of medicine, psychology, and social work by a careful crafting of the scope of practice language for the licenses.
*
* Coopersmith (1998). The politics of psychoanalysis at NPAP: the struggle for independence. NPAP 50th Anniversary Monograph. * Appel (2004). The New York State psychoanalytic license: an historical perspective. In Casement (ed), Who Owns Psychoaanysis 157-176. London: Karnac.
* Coopersmith (2005). Determinants of licensing in psychoanalysis: exclusivity and pluralism. The Psychoanalytic Review. (92)(6): 895-905.
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The scope of practice defines what a practitioner holding a license is legally allowed to do. Whereas the scope of practice of licensed psychoanalysts had allowed us to “identify, evaluate and treat dysfunctions and disorders,” this is euphemistic language for the “diagnose and treat” language contained in the license scopes of medical practitioners, psychologists, and social workers. It is the specific words “diagnose and develop assessment-based treatment plans” that were missing from the 2002 law that the current 2022 law adds to the scope of licensed psychoanalysts.
The twenty-year pathway to this legislation involved intense negotiations among the mental health professions and jockeying of allegiances at various times over various landscapes. The effort has been guided by the careful and strategic engagement of lobbyists hired by NAAP, who have been tireless in their support of independent psychoanalysis. The ultimate agreement has been that the education of independent psychoanalysts must meet the gold standard of social work education, as designated by NY State. The State Education Department will soon reveal what must be adjusted in institute training of psychoanalysts so candidates can become licensed under the new statute and what already-licensed psychanalysts must do meet the new State-established standard.
This legislation is momentous. After the law goes fully into effect in June of 2024, nevermore will the License in Psychoanalysis be termed a less-than license, nevermore will insurance companies be able to claim that tri-discipline service providers are superior to independent psychoanalysts.
Independent psychoanalysts owe a debt of gratitude to the invaluable contributions of NPAP and the efforts of the NAAP lobbyists.
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NPAP:TheAssociationandtheInstituteBecomeOne
By Jeff Werden
NPAP operated as two distinct entities for the bulk of its history. The Training Institute and the Membership Association were parallel organizations with almost identical structures. Thus, NPAP was governed by two completely independent boards and two sets of officers that largely mirrored each other. This resulted in separate board meetings on a monthly basis to manage NPAP. Later the two boards met on the same night to try and operate more efficiently. However, there was often lengthy discussions that made actual decision making a difficult process. It must be noted there were 20-30 people attending these meetings and much of the work of the boards was duplicative.
Twenty years ago it began to be discussed that NPAP might function better if it could be redeveloped into a single organization led by a single slate of officers and offer a smaller board structure. Several factors, including the passing of the New York State analytic license delayed work on this concept.
In early 2012 the issue was presented to the membership and various ideas were offered up for discussion as to how to accomplish a merger A referendum was held that year and the membership voted to merge the Institute and the Association into a single entity. Several NPAP members began to work on developing new By-Laws to serve the new single entity that would serve both the needs of our training institute and our responsibility to our members. This member led effort ended as we recognized that professional help was needed to enhance the effectiveness of this project.
To assist in developing governance that would be congruent with the outlines offered by The American Board for Accreditation in Psychoanalysis (ABAP)we sought legal assistance from the Lawyers Alliance who were able to offer us Pro Bono legal help .They connected us with attorneys who began to develop new By-laws that would meet the demands of New York State and support this shift.
It was determined by our lawyers that a new referendum was needed as too many years had passed since the prior vote by the membership.
In 2016/2017 the membership voted to look at this issue again by rescinding the earlier vote to merge the two entities. A second referendum was held and again the membership voted to merge into one organization.
It should be noted that several town hall meetings were held and three different board models were presented for consideration. There was a strong level of involvement by the membership and the election supported the choice of the governance structure that NPAP has operated with since June 1st of 2021.
NPAPs ’merger into a single entity took twenty years from the original discussions to its current operational status. Over this period many members have been involved in its development, many meetings have been held to discuss the varied proposals and several votes held for the membership to validate the new structure.
This process demonstrates the democratic nature of NPAP and its commitment to involvement of the membership in its evolution. As our psychoanalytic home gets closer to its first election as a single entity the fine tuning needed to support its future continues so that the programs and services NPAP offers will continue to meet the needs of the membership, candidates and the larger community.
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