Notices for Voices Left out of Newsletter

Many apologies to the Voices Editors.  I left this notice out of the January newsletter, so I am putting it here:

Call for Papers

Voices Summer 2014

Identity and Transformation: I, We, and Other

What is identity? How do we define ourselves to ourselves, to others, to our community or larger public? In therapy, how do patients present their identities to us? What is the mechanism of change – of transformation – that shifts  and liberates self?

From the biological to the social, our identities influence how we see ourselves and others. While some identifiers, such as gender and race, may seem obvious, some are hidden from others and even from ourselves. Biology, genetics, and environment begin to form us before we’re born. Parents transmit the code and shape the result. They dream their children into being; we are born into a world that already knows or recognizes us.

Does another’s view of us create identity or change it? Years ago, being called a “nerd” in high school relegated one to outsider status.  Today’s kids describe themselves as nerds, and by that moniker identifying themselves as smart or scientific or passionate about some endeavor or interest. What happens to the boy who’s been top of his class through school and finds himself in a college where everybody’s smart, and he’s merely average?  What about the aging beauty noticing her crepey skin?  Or the American-born, ethnically Korean woman who feels most American when she visits Korea? Issues of culture, class, race, religion gender, sexuality, nationality, and ethnicity both bond us and separate us.

Our patients come to us looking for happier lives and more satisfying relationships.  We witness dramatic transformations as clients discover themselves. As therapists, we must stay aware of the hidden and not-so-hidden ways that we and our patients deal with our similarities and differences, pregnant with the possibilities for transformation that lie in the exploration of those issues.

How does therapy--- individual, group, and couples--- help with differentiation and individuation?  What are the effects of group identities? What are the implications for our divided country, our divided selves, and for the troubled world?

           

For the summer 2014 issue of Voices, we welcome submissions on the theme of identity and transformation.  Direct inquiries and submissions (see Submission Guidelines on the AAP website, www.aapweb.com) to editors Kristin Staroba (kristin.staroba@gmail.com) and PenelopeNorton (psynorton@aol.com). 

Deadline for submission: April 15, 2014

Voices  50^th Anniversary Issue

In celebration of our 50^th year, our Winter 2014 issue will feature the Best of Voices.  We are inviting your nominations of  favorite articles, poems, photos, graphics, cartoons.   We are looking for selections from “way back” as well as those more contemporary or current.  We hope this will be a project of our entire community, as well as our Voices Editorial Review Board and our editors.  In addition, we hope that this issue will be one our readers will want to share with friends and colleagues, through gifts and special orders, in celebration of the Academy’s contributions to psychotherapy.  Please nominate your favorite selection from Voices to Kristin Staroba Kristin.staroba@gmail.com  or Penelope Norton psynorton@aol.com.     

President's Column - January

by Lorrie Hallman, President, AAP

The two items that are uppermost in my mind as I sit down to write this column are both about success, but very different from each other.  The first is the success of our recent Institute and Conference in Philadelphia.  We had a good blend of members, nonmembers and scholars in attendance, all of whom reported enjoying the meeting, feeling stimulated to go back to their work and/or studies, and looking forward to returning soon.  We all owe a big “Thank You” to Kristie Nies, our intrepid chairperson, and her stalwart committee, Lisa Makstein, Adam Klein, Denise Castro, Bradley Lake, Jenny Savitz Smith, Diane Shaffer and Janet Tyler.  Each of us in attendance appreciated your hard work and welcoming spirit.  I myself was especially inspired by Nancy McWilliams’ presentations and personhood. Not to mention that you are very entertaining dancers!

The second item on my mind, and soon to be on yours, is the success of your Executive Council in addressing the difficult and complex issues of wanting to increase our membership, welcome newcomers, and maintain the valued presence of our senior members, all while attending to how our dues affect our long-range budgetary process.   Those of you who have wrestled with a business or a family where members must be added and nurtured, while the cost of everything goes up and incomes go down, can appreciate the frustrating, necessary and intimately difficult choices we faced.  I consider us successful because we made significant progress this fall towards a workable solution we can all live with for the foreseeable future…until it all needs to be reworked again.

Our primary charge, emerging from our Strategic Planning meetings, was to create a structure of membership categories and their associated dues requirements that would keep us solvent while making it financially easier for young professionals to join us, whether as Students, Associates or Full Members, there being no doubt from our research that that the cost of membership is a primary obstacle in drawing these younger members.  Our task in the Executive Council meeting was to create and begin to implement the necessary groundwork of our earlier deliberations. To that end, several important decisions were voted on by the council and will be put in place beginning November 2014.  We will then come back to this issue at our summer EC meeting and work on the items we elected to delay to allow for more input and deliberation.  The heart of those discussions will be whether or not we need to raise our dues for the first time in over ten years.  We all hope not, but there are so many moving parts affecting that decision that we wanted more time for thought and discussion.  It has always been our goal to keep costs to our members as low as possible while maintaining our financial security.

In this meeting we primarily focused on our membership structure.  Our goal was to streamline the structure so that we could eliminate that which was not working and make the remainder more efficient and easier to alter when necessary.  Starting with the topic of welcoming younger/newer members and establishing a track to membership that they can afford, we came to several decisions.  First, we decided to combine the categories of Post-graduate Member and Associate Member into one category to be called “Associate.”  Since the old category of Post-graduate seemed redundant and unnecessarily cumbersome, we will now have only two categories before full membership, Student and Associate.  We also will create a tiered dues structure for Full Members newly joining AAP who are also new professionals, paying reduced dues for 2 or 3 years, gradually increasing to our Full Member dues.

We as an association have long been struggling with how to honor our older, loyal members while not straining our budget.  When the category of Life Member was established, there were quite a few who fit that category, but there were many more of us who had not reached the age of 65 at that time.  At first, Life Members did not pay dues.  Then, as we saw the proportions of older to younger members shifting, we asked Life Members to pay at least $117 in dues.  As the baby boomers have gotten older and our membership has decreased, we find ourselves in the same bind as Social Security and Medicare.  There are simply not enough members less than 65 and/or with less than 20 consecutive years of membership paying $350 in dues to support our increasing Life Members paying only $117.  This reality saddens us all but we are not at liberty to ignore it any longer.   

We have two solutions that we are working on simultaneously.  The first and most obvious, energizing solution is to continue to work on our programs that bring in new, younger members.  The second solution is more complicated.  We have decided to establish a new membership category called “Retired” as of November 2014.  “Retired” is defined as no longer having a private practice or working in any income-producing capacity as a psychotherapist.  Members will be asked to self-designate themselves as being retired and will be asked to pay a minimum of $117 in dues per year.  Retired Members will receive all the privileges of Full Members except that of being listed in the Find-a-Therapist section of the public portion of our website.

The honor of Life Membership will continue to be presented to those members of 20 consecutive years or more who have reached the age of 65 years old.  Life members will no longer pay reduced dues as of November 2014.  Instead, they will pay the same dues as Full members, unless of course they are retired and then they will continue to pay $117 annually. The EC believes that this change will allow us to continue to honor our Life Members while modernizing our attitudes about retirement age within our field and our membership.  Inevitably there will be a few people who are caught in the overlap between the Life Membership category (as related to dues) and the Retired membership category.  These are members who are already Life Members as of November 2014 but are not retired.  In order that we not ask them to pay $350 when they have already been paying a minimum of $117, EC has decided that they will continue as Life Members and pay the same dues as Retired Members, even if they are not yet retired.  Anyone who becomes a Life Member after November 2014 will continue to pay the dues of a Full Member until they self-designate as Retired.  Please remember that, if you are unable to pay your dues, you may request to pay hardship dues by contacting me by email or letter.

We also decided to remove the Inactive status from our categories of membership.  If you will remember, several years ago when I was Dues Chair, we instituted a year’s grace period before we made non-payment of dues an automatic resignation from AAP.  The reason for this addition at that time was that our dues and membership records had been so chaotic and mis-managed up to then that we had many “members” who had not paid their dues for years, some of whom were deceased!  We now believe we are past needing such a soft cushion.  Non-payment of dues by the deadline will result in the immediate loss of membership the first year it occurs.  Any member may be reinstated by consulting with the Membership Chair and paying an administrative fee of $25 as well as that year’s dues.  However, this will result in the loss of 20 years of continuous membership required for the Life Member honor.  As you might imagine, the backstory on this change is that we believe it’s time for us to grow up and give up being reminded, cajoled, and downright begged to pay our own way.  As Dairlyn, our new Dues Chair, has stated, you will be reminded only once before the deadline to pay your current dues.  You can do it now right on our website, if you haven’t already.  It’s a snap!

This summer we will be inviting Associates to our Summer Workshop for the first time.  In conjunction with the Membership and Outreach Chairs, we established several requirements Associates must meet in order to qualify for attendance.  They are as follows:  attendance of at least one I&C, 9 hours of process/experiential grouping, being active in gaining the required 100 hours of both therapy and supervision, attendance at a 3-hour process/orientation group Wednesday afternoon (to be led by two seasoned AAP members), plus being up-to-date with their dues and actively consulting with their AAP mentor.  We on EC believe that these requirements will both protect the Associates and protect the quality of our meeting.  The Membership Committee will be vetting our Associate Members to see who meets these qualifications for SW attendance.  At this time, we think 9 or 10 Associates may qualify.  Since Summer Workshop is highly desirable and the most valued offering for our Full Members, it is our hope that our Associate members will want to qualify.  We believe that both our Full Members and our Associate Members will benefit from this change; however, if it doesn’t work for some unforeseen reason, we will cease doing it after a 3-year trial run.

At the next EC meeting this summer, we will be working to nail down the dues amount for each category of membership and beginning to discuss the idea of AAP offering training programs for graduate students and post-graduates.  We are excited about the progress we have made thus far and anticipate developing current programs and creating new ones that will insure a secure and fulfilling future for the Academy we love and for the future of psychotherapy.

Energy Psychology: A New Frontier

- from January 2014 Newsletter

Training Institute 2014/2015

by Loretta Sparks

BANNED BY THE APA no more! 

In the mid 1990s I received a call from the Academy’s CE Chair, who was very apologetic, but told me that the APA required that my workshop on an Energy Psychology modality (Emotional Freedom Techniques) be withdrawn as a workshop for the upcoming I & C.  He had been advised that if the Academy went forward and did present the workshop, we would lose our status as an APA CE provider.  

When I got over the surprise or maybe shock  (I was never quite sure which), I suggested that the workshop be offered without CEs.  The Chair told me that was not going to fly either because he was told that even offering the workshop without CEs would result in the Academy losing its status as an APA provider.  WOW, banned by the APA!  Who would have thought that these gentle modalities would provoke such a reaction?

A lot has happened in the two decades that have passed since the APA drew that line in the sand.  Fifty studies have been published, 95% of which showed positive outcomes related to EP treatment.  These studies and additional efforts taken by the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (energypsych.org) have resulted in the APA lifting their ban on EP.

As a result, Victoria Danzig and I are thrilled to offer a two-year Training Institute on EP; the first year (Part I) may be taken independently of the second year.  However the second year has the prerequisite of Part I.

Part I will be held at Summer Workshop and I&C 2014.  It will focus on a basic introduction to the EP:  acupuncture system, the chakras, biofields, and muscle testing.  We will introduce the basics of the two most studied EP modalities, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and Tapas Acupuncture Techniques (TAT) and will discuss how to integrate them into your practice.

Learning how to use these mind-body techniques in traditional psychotherapy offers you a powerful tool to help relieve your client’s suffering.  In addition, you can help empower your clients in their own self-care by teaching them techniques they can use for self-soothing in between their appointments with you.

If you are interested in joining this Training Institute, please contact:

Loretta Sparks at Loretta@selfcarepower.com or Victoria Danzig at VictoriaDanzig@msn.com 

Looking to the Future

By Gordon Cohen, President Elect 

Back in 2007 EC set aside a half day work plenary at the beginning of each national meeting for a Strategic Planning session.  During the early years we used this time to develop our Mission (the underlying reason we exist), write our Competitive Edge statement (what’s unique about our organization), refine our Core Values (the guiding principles of the organization) and define our Vision (the big , bold, hairy goal where we are headed).   Since then we established the organization’s first significant goal, which is to increase our membership by 10%.  This is a long-term goal which will take us many years to achieve.

As President Elect one of my roles is to carry the mantle to the future forward.   So when I began last year, I synthesized and analyzed the ideas which EC had generated over the past six years to determine the direction for our upcoming short and long range plans .  My objective was to determine the next major goals which we will undertake as an organization.  I presented five areas for EC’s consideration. 

Following the Strategic Planning process EC rank ordered these five areas of interest to prioritize our next goal.  Over the next year I intend to present the findings in this column. 

The short term goal which emerged in Strategic Planning, which EC chose to address immediately, involves the dues reformulation for both our young professionals and Life members.   Lorrie addresses this current initiative in her President’s column.   

There are four remaining areas of interest and concern which are longer-term goals that EC considered last summer.  I’ve listed the questions in no particular order.   I will be filling you in on the results of how EC rank ordered these topics in my next column.  One of these topics was chosen by EC as the next large goal, which we hope to begin to address in 2014.  So, as a way to whet your appetites, EC was divided into the following work groups and deliberated these questions.

1. Increasing Revenue Streams: As the boomer generation ages and our membership numbers decline, supplementing our finances becomes more critical.  Develop a new program or several ideas which help generate additional revenue streams for the Academy.

2. Family Group Dilemma: One of the most complex aspects of the Academy’s social fabric are our family groups.  At last count there were 17 different family groups.  They are seen by some as what makes us unique, the glue which binds us.  For others they represent an underground sub structure which people experience as alienating.  Many find it hard to enter into family groups which are closed and too often these individuals do not maintain their membership over time.  Create a format through which members of the Academy can contend with the dilemmas which ensue from this complicated social web.

3. Public Forum for Promoting Psychotherapy:  We know so much about the value of psychotherapy both personally and professionally.  We know how to talk with our patients about its importance in their lives, but we are not as adept, when discussing this with the public at large or even with our colleagues.  We don’t focus as much on how to promote our work in the mainstream.  Some see our profession as regularly under siege, either from misinformation in the media, devaluation of our work by insurance companies and/or the political volleyball with party positioning in Congress over mental health care.  We presently have the RAP committee which is focused on research, but we need to expand the purview of this work.  Consider new modes of advocacy, so that we can highlight our strengths and persuade others about the import of our professional work.  How shall we accomplish this goal?

4. Greater Racial Diversity:  Why have we been so unsuccessful in gaining greater racial diversity over the years?  Explore this question and suggest possibilities for us to consider, with an eye to expand our racial diversity. 

Gordon Cohen  
President Elect

Suggested changes to the Membership Section of the Constitution

The chairs of the membership and constitution committees have collaborated and are proposing the following changes to Article II of the AAP Constitution, revised 6/2011.  This section concerns the definition, minimum standards and categories of membership.  Changes are proposed for two of these sections.  The election ballot disseminated in the spring will include the opportunity to vote for or against these revisions.

Items “b” and “e” of Section 3 currently read: 

Section 3.  Minimum standards for membership shall be:

b.     Specific training in psychotherapy with a minimum of 100 hours of supervision.

e.  Licensure in the governmental jurisdiction(s) in which they engage in independent practice, or when they practice under a governmental jurisdiction that does not require licensure that they meet the requirements for licensure as specified in the Academy’s Policies and Procedures Manual.

It is recommended that “b” be modified by the addition of the following sentence.   Licensure shall be an acceptable means of documenting supervision as long as the applicant’s license requires at least 100 hours of supervision.  

- January 2014 Newsletter

This motion was passed by the Executive Council in 2007 and has been implemented by the membership committee.  The suggested constitutional change is a codification of the EC action and the procedures of the membership committee.

No change is suggested for “e”. 

Section 4 defines the categories of membership of those psychotherapists not yet eligible for full membership in the Academy.  It currently reads:   

 Section 4.  In the interest of promoting the development of experienced psychotherapists, the following categories of affiliation and association are offered for those with the intent of becoming full members.  Minimum standards shall be: 

a.      Student Affiliate – Ongoing enrollment in a graduate degree program in one of the professional fields listed in Section 3.  Acceptable recommendations from at least two faculty members, supervisors, or Academy members; and agreement to work with an Academy member mentor.

b.      Post-Graduate Affiliate (maximum four years) – Completion of a doctoral or professional degree in one of the professional fields listed in Section 3.  Engaging in the practice of psychotherapy under appropriate supervision; acceptable recommendations from at least three faculty members, supervisors, or Academy members; and agreement to work with an Academy member mentor.

c.      Associate Member (maximum two years) – Meets all of the requirements for full membership, with the exception of either 100 hours of supervision and/or 100 hours of personal psychotherapy; and agreement to work with an Academy member mentor.

                      

In the last EC session, it was recommended that the categories of Post-Graduate and Associate be combined into a new Associate category.  No change is suggested to the requirements for Student Affiliate.  

An Associate member would be defined as (see next page):

 b.   Associate Member (maximum five years)- 

• • ‘Completion of a doctoral or professional degree in one of the professional fields listed in Section 3.
• • Actively involved in the practice of psychotherapy with               supervision as appropriate to the pursuit of licensure.
• • Completion of or actively engaged in obtaining 100 hours of                   personal  psychotherapy.
• • Acceptable recommendations from at least three

faculty members, supervisors or Academy members

• • Agreement to work with an Academy member mentor.

This change is proposed to simplify the categories of membership. The current Associate category is rarely used and is obsolete.  Once licensure has been obtained, the supervision requirement for full membership is met.  At the present time, there is only 1 Associate member of the Academy but there are 8 Post-Graduate Affiliates. 

Warmly,

Margaret Nichols, Chair, Constitution Committee

Nelia Rivers, Membership Chairperson

Musings of an Ex-Secretary

 - from January 2014 Newsletter

by Mendie Cohn

When Loretta Sparks called me up three years ago and invited me to run for the Academy secretary, my first reaction was, “Why me?”  My second reaction was, “I won’t win anyway because no one knows who I am.” To encourage me, Loretta told me, “We have a lot of fun in EC.”  Lot of fun?  How could sitting through 16 hours of meetings be a lot of fun?  But I figured, why not…since I’m not going to win anyway, I have nothing to lose (except the election of course).

Surprise number one: I was being considered for membership on EC with no prior experience. 

In spite of attending every I&C for the past 20 years and every Summer Workshop since joining the Academy 15 years ago, and also presenting six times at meetings, I truly believed that no one knew who I was except for my family group and a few other people that I befriended along the way.  I’m shy and I tend to keep a low profile, talking little in workshops out of fear of talking too much, and spending most of my free time at AAP alone in order to recover from the intense interpersonal interactions that take place in the workshops.

Surprise number two: Apparently people do know who I am because I won the election.

The only other time I ever ran for any type of office was when I was 15 years old.  My best friend was in the GAA (Girl’s Athletic Association) in high school. I thought that it would be fun to be the Art Director, who was responsible for putting up a weekly bulletin board.  I caused a bit of a ruckus because I was not a member of GAA, but there was nothing in their by-laws that said that you had to be a member of the organization to run for office.  Initially I was running against another girl, but she withdrew her candidacy and ran for a different position so that she could run unopposed. It turned out that I too ran unopposed, and I would be a shoo-in with even one vote.  I won that election too.

Surprise number three: Loretta was right…being part of EC is a lot of fun.  

I can’t say that the 12 to 15 hours I spent at home after meetings writing up the minutes was a hoot, but I loved being a member of EC.  I already knew everyone who was on EC during my term as secretary, but I got to know them in a different way.  EC is a working group, and experiencing the ways in which we all worked, sometimes together and sometimes at odds with each other, was interesting and educational.  I learned a lot about the running of an organization in general and more specifically, the inner workings of the Academy. I will miss the camaraderie and sense of shared purpose that we had together. 

Surprise number four: People were bemused that I took minute notes by hand rather than on a computer.

I didn’t quite understand why people found it interesting and amusing that I did not use a computer when taking notes during the meetings.  After all, I learned to write in kindergarten when I was five years old.  I learned, under protest, how to use a computer when I was in my fifties, and then only because my children needed help with their homework, which they did on the computer.  With roughly 45 more years of experience writing by hand, it made sense to me that this would be the way I would most efficiently take notes.

Epilogue

I have chosen, like Hillary Clinton, to take a rest from politics at this time. Right now I’m two-for-two in my political career, and I’m not quite ready to take the chance of losing next time.  I am very grateful to all of the Academy members who voted for me (and I still like those who didn’t) and enabled me to have such a rewarding experience as secretary. I encourage all of the other shy people who keep a low profile to consider running for an EC office.  Trust me…it really is a lot of fun. next time.  I am very grateful to all of the Academy members who voted for me (and I still like those who didn’t) and enabled me to have such a rewarding experience as secretary. I encourage all of the other shy people who keep a low profile to consider running for an EC office.  Trust me…it really is a lot of fun.

Non-Member Survey Results

 - from January 2014 Newsletter
By David Donlon

What are the obstacles that keep people from applying for AAP membership?   To help us shed some light on that question, the Outreach Committee designed and conducted a survey of people who had attended AAP events in the last 6 years and had not yet joined the Academy.  The survey produced a huge amount of information and we thought you might find some of the highlights interesting.

We asked, via e-mail, 338 people to complete our Survey Monkey questionnaire.    These were all people who attended an I&C, Southern Region conference, or a Salon.  Twenty percent responded, and almost all completed all 20 questions.  There is no way to know how representative our respondents were of the entire population of people who have been exposed to the Academy and not joined.   We might presume, for instance, that people for whom AAP remains salient were overrepresented.  With that caveat in mind, here are some of the numbers:

Although most learned about AAP from a person -colleague 53%, supervisor 28%, friend 22%, therapist 19% (more than one response was allowed) ,  10 people discovered us from the brochure and 4 from the website.

About 60% are in private practice, 40% are not – this is significant because dues and conferences generally cannot be business expenses for people who are not, well, in business.

Median income was $50,000 - $60,000.  One third made less than $40,000

Thinking of their first AAP event:
25 % did not know anyone else in attendance

80 % felt welcome

• ¬ Those who did not feel welcome were scattered among attendees of different meetings
• ¬ 30 % of the people who felt welcome at their first event still plan to join in the future, but only one  person who did not feel welcome plans to join in the future

More than half the respondents added comments in this section and as the numbers above indicate most described the experience with words such as warm, friendly, cordial, vibrant, connected, and inviting.   Others spoke of being startled by the intensity and somewhat intimidated, but appreciative of it all the same.  People noted, among other things, the members’ investment in pushing each other toward growth.   The few negative comments in this section focused on disliking the intensity, the focus on therapists’ emotional reactions, and feeling excluded from in-groups.

Obstacles to joining

In citing obstacles to joining, cost was the most frequent, although still only cited by a minority of the respondents.  (People could choose multiple options)

37% selected “dues are too expensive” as an obstacle

23 % selected “national meetings are too expensive”  (interesting - in that national meetings are, of course, much more expensive than the dues)

10% selected not feeling welcome

In comments, several  people cited feeling the intensity and open conflict was not for them.  Similarly a couple of people were looking for something more informational and less personal.   A small number of others,  more experienced people,  were stopped by the idea of the application process and collecting documents and letters.  Others cited changes of direction in either career or geography that steered them away from AAP.

The younger and less experienced attendees were much more likely to cite expense as a barrier, as were retired people.  Only one of the 14 respondents in their sixties cited expense as an obstacle. See the following table:

   

 Expense  As an Obstacle Related to Age and Experience

 
People who listed as obstacles to joining that either dues or national meetings were too expensive:

AGE                                                                                  EXPERIENCE

20’s	67%	6 of 9		<  1	75%	3 of 4
30’s	53%	8 of 15		1-3	33%	2 of 6
40’s	27%	3 of 11		3-5	77%	7of 9
50’s	53%	7 of 13		5-10	44%	4 of 9
60’s	7%	1 of 14		10-20	45 %	5 of 11
70’s	67%	4 of 6		20+	21%	4 of 19

  We asked people to rank the following 9 factors in order of importance to them in considering joining a professional organization.  Incredibly, all but one person took the time to do this!

Note:  A low number = a more important factor.   

There was a strong correlation between continued interest in joining AAP in the future and age.  90% of our respondents under 40 said they remained interested, compared with only 40% of those over 50.

Those are just some highlights.  We are happy to send you the full report and may even be able to go back to the survey to make other correlations if you have a specific curiosity.  Write David at dkdjmt@mindspring.com

Submitted by David Donlon and the Outreach Committee, Maureen Martin, chair, Curt Arey,  Suzanne Timms.