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President-elect (one to be elected)

Independent practitioners do business in a changing environment where we daily face extinction. Masters level practitioners undercut our fees, as consumers gradually lose track of the distinction between psychologists and “therapists.” Insurance reimbursement continues to dwindle while presenting increasingly complex sets of hurdles blocking our path to payment. Many of us have thriving self-pay practices, while others struggle. Some have moved into exciting new niches, learning from Division 42 colleagues, while most continue to fight the deceptive, cynical and cruel practices of managed care.

In this climate, Division 42 is our source of power at a national level. The Division leadership is strongly committed to protecting independent practice from that which threatens it. Within APA, evidence based practice looms, attempting to force us to restrict our interventions to small sets of methods amenable to scientific substantiation. Beyond APA, vindictive licensing enforcement looms, causing us to think so much about “risk management” we may forget the inspiration that drew us to clinical work. Additionally, state laws require the post-doctoral year prior to licensure. Once a good idea, in today’s climate it could render a career as an independent practitioner financially prohibitive. As President, I will continue to make our Division 42 the Practitioners’ division and use our political and financial clout to single-mindedly focus on what is best for INDEPENDENT practitioners.

No other APA Division offers this. The other clinical divisions may be populated by salaried or academic clinicians, where Board members may pick up their salaries while attending divisional meetings, and relish the opportunity to add their APA work to their C.V.’s, increasing their qualification for tenure and promotion. Our Division is different. Most of us are not salaried and give our own time and money for Division 42 activities. We are active because we wish to direct the resources of APA to serve our Independent Practice goals. The founders of our Division recognized our uniqueness: We are in business, and must thrive there. We must never diffuse our Division’s resources towards APA’s wide range of public-spirited endeavors. Such efforts are noble, yet Division 42 exists for reasons beyond these. We must harness our budget and our energy for independent practice, and to these ends I seek to lead the Division.

I have been a member of Division 42 for many years. In the early 1990’s, I began a humor column for the Independent Practitioner, “On the Lighter Side,” which won a Special Award from the Division for dealing with serious practice issues in an entertaining way. In 1998, I became Associate Editor of the Independent Practitioner, and in 2001, Editor. In 1999, I joined our Division 42 Task Force on the APA Ethics Code and represented practitioner needs at meetings of the Ethics Code Task Force in Washington. Independent practitioners are the primary targets of ethics enforcement, and our Division succeeded in changing the language of the Code to offer us better protections in court

As President, I shall continue this work and strive tirelessly to promote and protect Independent Practice.

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