Across the nation and
around the world a number of highly reputed autonomous psychoanalytic
institutes have been established, training a significant number of
psychoanalysts.AAPI, Incorporated
(May, 1999), is the first national and international interdisciplinary and
multitheoretical psychoanalytic association with autonomous psychoanalytic
Institutes as affiliate members and psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic
candidates as individual members. A psychoanalytic Institute is considered
to be autonomous if it does not belong to a psychoanalytic association that
dictates and overseas the training program.
These psychoanalytic institutes
highly value their autonomy, for they recognize that centralized control has
often been used to support particular theoretical paradigms and to curtail
the advent of new theory. Over the years, autonomous psychoanalytic
institutes, always interdisciplinary in nature, have grown in numbers and
are contributing significantly to the education of psychoanalysts and to the
creative evolution of psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice.
AAPI is a professional association
for psychoanalytic institutes and their members, including their graduate
(or in some areas called certified) psychoanalysts, faculty, supervisors,
and psychoanalytic candidates. AAPI is not interested in dictating
policy to Institutes, but in preserving their autonomy. AAPI is not an
accrediting organization. AAPI is democratically governed with each
affiliate Institute and the individual members electing two representatives
to the Executive Board. The Executive Board, in turn, elects the officers
for two-year terms.
Currently with 21 affiliate
Institutes, AAPI serves to enrich the affiliate Institutes and the
individual members in the pursuit of psychoanalytic education, research, and
continued development of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.
Importantly AAPI represents affiliate Institutes and individual members in
professional advocacy matters. With sufficient membership, AAPI plans to
request representation on the Psychoanalytic Consortium that is developing
training criteria.
AAPI organizes scientific meetings,
represents psychoanalysis to the lay community, and will develop an
interdisciplinary journal devoted to the development and comparison of
psychoanalytic models of theory and practice. As an individual member, you
are listed in a national and international directory. We invite autonomous
psychoanalytic Institutes, psychoanalysts, and psychoanalytic candidates to
join AAPI.
