by Todd Rising, Psy.D.

NCSPP was founded 35 years ago this February. Our creation story included the impassioned strivings of a handful of non-medical clinicians who sought advanced psychoanalytic training and an organizational home. At that time, the American Psychoanalytic Association excluded clinicians without an M.D. from seeking training at accredited institutes. This vanguard collective of clinicians pushed for policy change, which led to broadened access for many clinicians who were previously excluded. The foundational spirit of NCSPP centered on inclusivity, creative dialogue, and collaboration among the local community of lay individuals and professionals from all psyche-oriented disciplines who were interested in psychoanalysis. (Click here for a synopsis of NCSPP’s history.)

Thirty five years later, NCSPP is similarly called to set our bearings towards justice in determining our path forward. The issue in 1986 around inequity among medical and non-medical clinicians has now been resolved. In 2021, however, after harmful and racist missteps that NCSPP unconsciously enacted in 2020, we are at another inflection point in considering pathways towards justice: specifically, identifying and confronting the complex interweaving of policies, ideas, and blindspots in both our field and organization that perpetuate exclusion, inequity, and oppression. Reflective of the spirit of our founders, NCSPP and its current Board, Executive Committee, and staff, are committed to taking an intentional deeper dive, exploring and dis-covering our problematic historical and current ideas, mindsets, and policies that are infused with White supremacy, racism, and other manners of squeezing out difference from historically hegemonic spaces. Our Equity Clause was a first step. Now we must take further active steps towards examining our own internal harmful structures and policies.

NCSPP recently entered into an inter-organizational, collaborative space wherein representatives of analytically-minded local organizations meet to learn from one another about our own organizational structures and dynamics and how to work toward anti-racist ones instead. Power and its sources and locations was also the focus of NCSPP’s first foray into organizational DEI training with our consultants in mid-January. In part, we focused on how organizational members’ desires for community and connection live in tension with established hierarchical power structures that lead to isolation of various organizational parts that therefore remain relatively “outside” of contact and integration with larger processes. We plan to continue our work to analyze our own internal structures and culture that lead to in-group/out-group dynamics, alienation, and foreclosing of access to the much needed dialogue as a whole organization. The next steps of our journey will include workshopping with our consultants, making space to identify and tease apart the complexly interwoven strands of power, access, and inclusivity, and infuse our journey with clarified intentionality.

As we continue our work to improve upon our foundation and breathe further vitality into the initial spirit of inclusivity and diversity that our founders brought to NCSPP’s culture, we also seek to clarify paths towards increasing equity. We invite interested members of our community to become involved in a number of ways, one of which is to consider becoming involved as a Committee Member or as a Committee Chair (and therefore Board member). If you or someone you know may be interested in joining us in our work, I invite you to contact me, as we currently have open positions on the Board and among various committees. Please feel free to reach out to me at trising@ncspp.org if you have any questions about open positions and the opportunity to join us on our journey. We invite your participation and voice as we wend our way forward, together.