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I feel flattered the Editors have asked me to write an autobiography. It is especially nice for me because I have just ended a 6 year term on CAPP. Governance folks were very kind to me as I stepped down from CAPP. They talked about me as an advocate, as a mentor, as a force in the professionalization of Psychology. I thought to myself that it was all true but I was aware that “timing” was an important variable in all of that. When I received my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Iowa in 1951 the world of private practice as I know it today was nonexistent. I took my first job as Chief Psychologist at the VA Mental Hygiene Clinic in Omaha, Nebraska and set about learning how to do psychotherapy and supervise trainees. A co-worker, a Psychiatrist who also had a home office referred a patient to me and offered his office until I established myself. My medical analyst interpreted my wish to go into private practice as an oedipal acting out considering the laws of Nebraska which defined psychotherapy as a medical practice. The act was enacted in 1905. I did not accept the patient my friend referred and instead experienced this as a radicalization of me. I helped form the Nebraska Psychological Association and served on its first board. High on our agenda was enacting a licensure law. This came to pass soon after but after 4 years in Omaha I transferred to the VA Hospital in East Orange NJ in order to enroll in a psychoanalytic institute in NY and get further graduate training. But I was already radicalized and the agenda was set, namely to legitimize the practice of psychology and to work to enact laws protecting the profession and the public. By my second year in East Orange, I was in part time private practice and by 1957 I left the VA and was in full time private practice. At the time there was no licensing law in NJ and there was no recognition by insurance companies. My colleagues who were on the same path as myself and I went to work for NJPA and we were successful in getting a licensing law passed in NJ and the following year (1968) we were successful in getting a Freedom of Choice law passed, the first state in the US to get such a law enacted.. My practice was growing and my psychoanalytic training was finished. I was practicing psychoanalysis, teaching in a psychoanalytic institute (NPAP), and helping my wife, Pat (also a clinical psychologist with a PH.D. from Iowa) raise our 4 kids.
The Freedom of Choice law stated that if a person had a policy covering mental health treatment, then a licensed psychologist could be chosen as the therapist. In other words we forced the insurance companies to recognize us! For the next 20 years or so, we prospered as a profession.
I was appointed to the APA Committee on State Legislation (COSL) and in 1974 became its Chair. We took our dog and pony show on the road and worked with state associations to learn about the FOC law and to create legislative committees in their state and help train them to create similar laws throughout the country. COSL was one of two committees in APA dealing with professional matters. The other was COHI (Committee on health insurance). Both of these committees reported to the Board of Professional Affairs but essentially they were the only practice committees in APA. We worked together. I went to all COHI meetings and one of them (either Gene Shapiro or Herb Dorken) would attend COSL meetings. We realized that APA was far from representing practice issues on Council or on Boards and we needed to make some changes. I was elected to BPA and became its Chair in 1978. I was elected to Council in 1976 and served for the next 28 years representing New Jersey first, and then Divisions 12, 29, and mostly 42 as practitioners became more prominent on Council. During this time Council created the Practice Directorate and CAPP and the world of practice was getting great support from APA. It took many years to get to the point where practice was well established in APA. APA had been representative of academic psychology from its inception and to let the younger sibling into the family was a process in integration that took many creative years to accomplish.
To step back in time again, the year is 1969 and many of us were lamenting that academic psychology was slow to appreciate the role of practice nor its responsibility in educating psychologists for future practice. In NJ my colleague Morrie Goodman and I sent out 20 post cards to the leaders in NJPA to gather at my home to discuss creating a psychological services center. The upshot of that first meeting was our course changed and we determined that creating a Professional School of Psychology was a better goal. We spent 5 years of countless committee meetings and discussions with heads of programs at NJ universities and finally with the Board of Higher Education of NJ. The Board decided that a professional school of psychology was a worthwhile endeavor and granted the school to Rutgers ,the State University of NJ. The school opened in the fall of 1974 and for the next 14 years I served as a Visiting Professor teaching psychoanalytic therapy, supervising graduate students, and serving on the executive committee of the faculty. I did this one day per week while maintaining my full time private practice. It was exciting for me to bring psychoanalysis into the world of academia. Most psychoanalytic institutes exist outside of universities and research and cross fertilization is necessary for any science to grow. Although today psychoanalysis has grown far beyond what Freud envisioned, it is still being marginalized because of its dearth of research. What I’ve discovered is that research coming from other fields such as neuroscience and attachment theory has enriched psychoanalysis. Brain changes occurring as a result of psychotherapy have been documented. Freud knew this but the technology hadn’t caught up with him.
My 14 years at Rutgers were wondrous. I loved working with the students who were the brightest anywhere. They helped me experience the Ericksonian notion of “Generativity”. I gave up my University connection when I opted for 3 day weekends and more leisure time at my Lake house.
During the time I was at Rutgers, I was appointed to the new APA Accreditation Committee and served for 4 years. I left that task to devote myself to the Presidency of Division 42 in 1987. But having worked on the Joint Council for professional Education for Psychology (JCPEP) for a few years we had a vision of what professional education should be like and working with the COA was an opportunity to put into existence the JCPEP principles. So wherever possible Norine Johnson ( my co practitioner on COA)
And I managed to insert truly friendly practice-supports into the accreditation documents. Believe me, had we not been there, the principles would have sounded like the old ones and practice once again would have been neglected. I think of it as “timing” again. Being in the right place at the right time and thinking out of the box. We made sure hands on supervision was built into the criteria so that today when Council grapples with the idea of having people ready for licensure when they get their degree the students are really ready.
One of my really good moves was getting Council to approve a million dollars a year for Public Education. For too long our best work was hidden in our textbooks and we did real well talking to ourselves. But the public needed to know of our expertise and I orchestrated the PE motion through Council. Ron Fox was President of APA at the time and was really helpful in seeing this motion through to success.
While I was President of Division 42(1987) I created the Task Force on Managed Care which is now called the TF on mc and Health Care Policy. I co-chaired it with Jeff Barnett, and Stanley Graham, then later Art Kovacs and now Ivan Miller and Gordon Herz. The managed care movement has taken over the delivery of psychological services and of course lowered our fees drastically. While the CEO’s of mc companies have made fortunes, the practitioners have had to work twice as hard to keep up their standard of living. As “providers” we have experienced the denigration by the industry movers. Once again my radicalism comes to the fore and I have worked with a bunch of loud and angry practitioners trying to combat this monster. We have published tips on working with mc, articles on how psychotherapy and mc are incompatible..and recently have introduced a motion into Council on a Health Care Policy for APA which I’m hopeful will pass in 2006. As I have watched our practices being hard hit by MC takeover, I still believe what we do as Psychologists the public really needs. I love the work I do
Psychoanalysis today has grown and evolved slowly from a one person psychology to an interactive psychology with an awareness of how countertransference influences the process. I have been observing how attachment theory is being incorporated into psychoanalytic theory. I see myself noting the nature of early attachments (which of course is the transference in therapy) but observing it in adult relationships outside the therapy. Staying abreast of the growth within our field is a life long endeavor and my passion for our field is still strong. I have been influenced by my wife who is a trained family therapist. She made me much more aware of the system in our lives, so that for example, the oedipal complex must take account of the others in our lives not just the mother the child and the father. I,e, the siblings. Having grown up as an only child, it was natural for me to overlook the role of siblings in development and just see the triangle.
Throughout this narrative, I have been aware that the profession has rewarded me in countless ways for the work I have done on behalf of the profession. Although my agenda has always been the insuring of making psychology practice institutionalized in our culture, I have been blessed with a responsive profession
My thanks to Psychology for making my life meaningful. My thanks to my wife, my 4 children (Barbara, Laurel, Brian and Doug) and my 10 grandchildren (Jessica, Jacob, Max, Emily, Madelyn, Isaac, Lucas, Jaclyn, Nina and Matthew) who have enriched my life with love . I should add one other thing. Jazz music has always been a part of my life. Playing jazz piano in bands with wonderful musicians has rounded out my life. For example, I expect to reunite with New Orleans musicians and play for the President’s party (APA President, that is) when our convention meets in New Orleans in 2006. I have also managed to race a sailboat over the past few summers so if I’m not battling managed care I am competing with my fellow sailors for fun and glory.
My 54 year career in psychology has been a varied one with private practice, University teaching at Rutgers U., teaching in a Psychoanalytic Institute, publishing occasionally, and joining with fellow practitioners in APA to make the world safe for psychology. As I write this autobiography I have no intention of retiring from practice. I am very aware of the importance of the relationship in therapy and am certain that I will continue to keep my therapy relationships alive and vital. And mostly, very interesting to me.
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