(2001). Journal of American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 29:355-363 The External Credentialing Process as a Joint Endeavor: Lessons from the Past

I am very honored to participate on this panel this evening and am particularly grateful to Ann Louise Silver for her wisdom in arranging this panel as the opening session of a scientific program of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. I feel both fortunate and saddened to be on this panel. I feel fortunate for the opportunity to engage in this polylogue and share some of my own thoughts with you, and I feel saddened because Robert Pyles, the president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, could not participate because of a long-standing commitment for this evening. I send you both his greetings and good wishes as well as his sincere regrets that he could not be here. I would also like to stress that my comments here this evening, like at any other scientific discussion, are my own personal opinions and do not reflect any “official ” position of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Obviously, I shared my ideas with my colleagues at the American after I wrote them. Thus, these comments are not a joint production nor, in fact, influenced by any discussion with anyone else. I am stressing this point because my paper has a very simple conclusion—a recommendation, as a matter of fact. My conclusion is that there is only one way to effectively implement a joint endeavor on credentialing psychoanalytic institutions, and eventually individual psychoanalysts. I will argue that for credentialing to occur, all of us will have to shift our focus. We need to shift away from a political orientation to a scientific orientation. It seems to me that up to now we have needed to pay a great deal of attention to political considerations because of th