Dear PINC Community,
Unbelievably, this will be my last message to you as PINC’s President. Two years have gone by quickly, and, as always in the life of PINC, they have been very eventful. After two years of working on our Vision Statement under Bruce Weitzman’s leadership, we have spent the last two years in the beginning stages of implementing the provisions of that statement. It is slow going, but there are some important changes that have been made that will (and already are) making PINC more accessible, and more diverse. Three major innovations were addressed during the last two years. Our credentialing system has been restructured to make the process less quantitative, more personal, and more welcoming. We set a $100/hour maximum fee for supervision. While we are still in the trial stage of this policy, we hope that it will make training accessible to more people. We approved a change in frequency requirements for training cases to be in line with IPA standards. Now, all training cases and personal analysis can be at a frequency of 3-5 times/week. In addition, we are making a major change in our leadership with Gail Kaplan stepping down from her position as Executive Director, and a national search underway for someone with a different set of skills to see us through our next developmental period. Gail has graciously agreed to stay in her position until a new ED is found. These changes, as well as our learning curve around hybrid classes, have created mixed reactions among our membership. The following chart (courtesy of our Visions, Inc. consultants, Jimmie Turner and Sarah Stearns), might help us understand the organizational strains and reactions as we face necessary changes to our institute.
I think, as an organization, we are moving back and forth within the emotional states named in the chart, and parts of the institute move differently from others, creating greater tensions. I offer this as an aid in the work we all need to do in order to understand some of the pressures and forces at play. I ask members to think about where they might fall with regard to these changes. Some members might experience the institute as changing at the right pace, with feelings that are manageable, i.e. transitioning, Others might feel that things are happening too quickly and they are being left behind. I’m sure others feel we are not going fast enough. The leadership of PINC is committed to both developing more equitable structures, and in bringing the community along as best we can. It’s an imperfect process, but one that will keep us on the cutting edge of psychoanalytic progress. It has been an honor to serve as President of PINC, and I look forward to what the next President, Elise Geltman, and her Board, will be able to accomplish in the next two years.
My best wishes to all of you,
-Kali Hess, President, PINC
