The IPA: A Solution that Became the Problem.

There is an Arabic proverb that goes like this; the one who reveals the truth to you is your friend (Sadeekak mun Asdakak), Notice the rhyme in the two words of friend and truth.

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I am starting this post with a proverb because I expect, if not rejection it will be resentment toward the main idea I am promoting here. I think the IPA is an obstacle in the way to getting psychoanalysis a place in Academia, and extending its life in the field of the humanities.

I am aware that the subject of the IPA is of no of interest to psychoanalysts anymore; members and none-members. I am also aware that tackling that subject will not bring any changes to the ‘ongoings’ of psychoanalysis in any local or regional psychoanalytic institution. In my limited research of the status of psychoanalysis in some countries, I could not even sense that the IPA constitutes a problem to deal with. On the contrary, in some regional branches there are more concern about the IPA than the IPA causing concerns. Because the IPA is the final point of authorization in psychoanalysis it is not sensible to ignore its real current status. The IPA is in trouble everywhere. Maybe it is not an issue in practical terms, but it is important in terms of reflecting the true image of psychoanalysis anywhere it exists. Its trouble has been felt for many, many years (since 1995), and it was and still is the dwindling numbers of its membership. However, I did not come across any real effort or attempt at understanding the nature of the problem by looking at the declining interest in the membership of the IPA as the right thing to expect and to happen. Quite the reverse. The IPA custodians seem to think that the lack of interest in its membership is caused by lake of shared interests and poor interaction between its members. I have the impression that lately, the IPA hired a marketing company that suggested a competition in short stories writing between the members, and other things of the same nature to create an atmosphere of camaraderie between the members. The most obvious in those attempts is the avoidance of dealing with the issue in trouble: psychoanalysis.

The existing and symbolic status of the IPA brings to focus three chronic problems that psychoanalysts refrain from confronting and dealing with. The three problems are: apprenticeship as the means of qualifying the psychoanalysts, training and certification, and the vague link between membership and professionalism.

1.      Apprenticeship and Qualifying the Psychoanalysts.

Back to history. The unchanging function of the IPA as the legitimate authority of psychoanalysis conceals (camouflages) the natural changes that are inevitable in any evolving thought like psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was not a Freudian discovery; there was no psychoanalysis to discover. He discovered few new and radical things about the ‘psyche’, which were later called Psychoanalysis. Professionals, mainly from the medical profession, and from different parts of Europe got interested, and they started meeting regularly to exchange ideas. During those meetings interested physician and none-physicians were learning from Freud and from each other. Some genuinely and important matters started to emerge, and the meetings were in bigger demand. The promising nature of those meetings got formalized, and an IPA was the solution. In 1910 the IPA was formed. It became  both a membership body and an apprenticeship club (by the nature of the novelty of the subject that required transmitting new knowledge through others who knew more and better). Ten years later both training and membership became practically the twins that the IPA produced to make psychoanalysis a movement; not just a local endeavor. The notion of training and organizing the membership qualification gave birth to the psychoanalytic movement that expanded nationally and internationally to become a new addition to Western Culture.

Unfortunately, the double functions of overseeing training in the IPA training centers and accepting the newly trained candidates as members of the same institution fused, or rather confused, the two acts of training and membership. In spite of the expanding of the psychoanalytic movement and the practical impossibility of maintaining standards of training in psychoanalysis in the system of the IPA training centers, the ‘guardians’ adopted the idea of duplicating the same modality in the newly opened frontiers. They just keep exporting the Berlin ethos to the new center. There was nothing wrong with the Berlin model except that it was just a starting point and not the end line. The IPA should have separated the two functions or kept them together with the understanding that they should not be confused so the same training analyst will not serve in both capacities ever, or at least not at the same time.  

In the glorious time of the guilds and apprenticeship in the middle ages the line that separated the apprenticeship system from the guild functions was strictly preserved and respected. The training part of a profession was kept independent of the professional part of belonging to the guild. What difference does it make? The apprenticeship part of any fundamental profession was under the authority that was creating the requirements and standards of the training needed, and the innovations that were introduced to those professions. On the other hand, the membership body of the professional “Guild” was independent, as the condition to secure its neutrality and objectivity in accepting its members.  In psychoanalysis, the apprenticeship part is assigned to the training institutes, which is supposed to meet the standers defined by the Association (the analytic guild).  In other words: the training institutes of psychoanalysis are responsible for the standards of education and training of the psychoanalysts. The Association is the body that oversees those standards of psychoanalysis and decides if the quality of the graduate is good enough to qualify him to become member of the guild. The separation of the two bodies is fundamental and elemental.[aF1] [aF2]  Without their separation the IPA will accept all the graduates of its training institutes (do you notice where the problem of the training-analyst starts from?!) and the institutes will guarantee the graduate the acceptance in the IPA, thus qualifying him as a certified analyst (again do you see where the training analyst status could be corrupted). The difference between fusing the two functions of qualifying and certifying the psychoanalyst and separating those two functions is the ‘common sense’ of professionality.

The other inherent problem in the IPA being the training body and the accrediting authority at the same time is the functional interdependency between the training side of the IPA and the membership of the Association. For the association to survive it needs to increase its membership and that could be done by managing the institutes in certain ways. The training faculty of the institutes could also manage training in a way that will attract more candidates to training, thus the membership will have more members. Moreover, the membership institution could lower its standards of training for the same purpose. Am I talking about things that could happen and are actually happening in our revered psychoanalytic profession!!

2.      Training and Certifying the Trainees:

The IPA- officially- recognizes only its training centers as the qualifying place to its membership. However, the graduates of its training centers are not allowed to see patients unless they have a recognized clinical degree from a recognized university. Instead of going through the many contradiction the IPA membership creates I will just remind   the readers that we are dealing with a situation created close to century ago regarding psychotherapy, which was an unheard-of term, let alone a term that had a meaning. The contemporary contradictions the IPA embodies are coming from the very limited changes done to that old conception and system, which was conceived in the first four or five decades of last century. What we have to ask and answer and finally decide is: should we end the old conception of psychoanalysis as it is engraved in the IPA’s protocol, or just tinker with it a little? It also clear that we are facing another more profound question that is implicit in the first one: Could there still be psychoanalysis if we do away with IPA) if we decided to do away with the concept of psychoanalysis which the IPA still adopts?  

The answer to the first question is not supposed to be an expression of attitude or personal preference. In my very modest survey of the status of psychoanalysis in different local and regional IPA branches it was evident that there was not one psychoanalytic society that membered the IPA, that had one society (except in North Europe). The splits within the psychoanalytic community are always the same: a training analyst and his followers (previously private patients in training) disagree with the controlling figures of the society and split, claiming theoretical disagreements. Not one (according to only me) was ever capable of articulating the points of difference he claimed to make him think of saving psychoanalysis from other psychoanalysts. Even Lacan who was and still is the most articulate innovator in psychoanalysis did not say something convincing about what was wrong with Lagashe. All IPA sub-associations are made of more than one local society (with its own ideas about training) and there is no justification offered for that split. I did not find two branches that had one and the same definition of psychoanalysis. Practically and pragmatically speaking, the IPA as a global association answers our first question this way: we could do away with psychoanalysis, but we cannot do away with the IPA if we want to keep psychoanalysis living. That answer highlights that belonging to an organization is the gist of our identity

3.      Membership and Professionalism:

Psychotherapy is no longer a frivolous matter or unverified method of dealing with a major need of many people. It is also impossible to talk about psychotherapy without psychoanalysis coming in the picture, because all psychotherapies are offshoots of psychoanalysis, one way or another. This is a very subtle but important issue to examine when we talk about the IPA. IPA was the beginning of the profession of psychotherapy and it was natural that gaining its membership implied that the member is a psychoanalyst. It was the dream of so many young people at the beginning of the twentieth century to become, one day, member of that reputable organization. The gradual emergence of other types of psychotherapy on the one hand, and on the other, the gradual deterioration of the standards of the IPA training, which is not considered or confronted by the IPA Guardians, created a very confusing situation in the field which IPA considered its backyard. The impossibility of checking the standards of few hundred centers, scattered all over the world, resulted in a multifaceted deterioration of psychoanalysis.

The old idealized link between the professionalism of the psychoanalyst and earning the membership of the IPA hardly exists anymore. The vanishing unified meaning of “psychoanalysis” in the different IPA branches makes that link impractical. Most analysts would not accept this characterization of the situation and refute my judgement of the quality of contemporary psychoanalysis, if not because of lack of concern by the leadership of the IPA, it will be for narcissitic reasons. In the narrow field of psychoanalytic activity, which I live in in North America, psychoanalysis is a generic term of psychotherapy. To put in a more precisely: psychoanalysis is the grammar of the language of psychotherapy, and we could have good grammar and bad grammar. But the IPA that was once strictly psychoanalytic, and its function was limited to learning, training, practicing, and professional certification and accreditation of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts has diversified. A couple of years ago a strong call for adapting the functions of the IPA to the needs of the public so the IPA would accommodate those needs failed in making any change in the dropping care about its basic function. That attempt that started west of the USA proves that psychoanalysis as it is now has no appeal to people anymore. At any rate, it is not correct to certify a practitioner in psychoanalysis that does not have the basic shared qualifications required to work with patients, in the field. In other words, the IPA could be considered a fraud because it certifies people- as psychoanalysts- who are not allowed to see patients because they do not have the right to that.

All those ‘real’ issues against the present status the IPA shrink if compared to the emerging-if not the already established – systems of training and qualifying psychoanalysts away from the influence of the IPA. Universities -notably- almost everywhere- are open to include psychoanalysis as an academic program or part of a psychotherapy program. This development changes the IPA from the solution to organizing the psychoanalytic movement for most of the last hundred years, to makes it a problem because its coemption with academia. If someone wants to become a psychoanalyst where would he go? IPA or a university program? Officially and traditionally he should seek training in an IPA training center. Practically he should go to a university program to get a better education and possibly some practical training. The difference is that in academia the aspect of apprenticeship would not be considered favorably.

From a Solution to a Problem:

The IPA, or the international institution of psychoanalysis was the solution to the burgeoning movement of psychoanalysis up to maybe the sixties of last century. It created a sense of commonality and internationality. However, it should have been expected that with time, psychoanalysis, the demand for it, the cultural factors and social evolution will change it, and the need and the structure of an international institution will be in need for revision. The IPA was a solution to a situation that needed it. That situation changed and the need to maintain it became more undesirable to the practicing psychotherapist. However, both candidates and training analysts maintained a fixed idea that there is something called psychoanalysis. As such, the IPA had to be preserved and remain the shelter for that ‘thing’. If there is any truth to that untested belief it should be ‘there is psychoanalysis of the subject that should emerge from him and not applied to him. For instance, sexuality of the present subject, and even aggression, are very different from what they were ninety years ago and fifty years ago. Therefore, psychoanalysis and its institution have to be put in the context of the time. I do not think anyone would miss that internationality now-a-days is not the same as it was in the time of the International Psychoanalytic Association.

If this point is missed by the guardians of the IPA psychoanalysis will suffer in its way to die. It is now suffering –differently- in different parts of the world because the IPA does not accept that it is psychoanalysis that need to change, not the organization or the membership. Changing psychoanalysis is not as it was thought about in the early years: making it psychotherapy (which is now nothing but…). No, changing psychoanalysis is changing the notion of the repressed and the psychodynamics of defense and resistance into a psychology of expression and the sophistication of the human phenomena: psychoanalysis not anymore the message that Freud came down with: it is the message that we need to decipher, interpret and understand.

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