Scientists Divorce Practitioners: Split In The American Psychological Association

Prescriptions. Third-party payments. Health maintenance organizations. What do these have to do with science? That’s exactly what research scientists in the American Psychological Association have been asking for the past two decades as they watched psychologists in professional practice increasingly dominate the APA. Why should they put up with debates over health insurance and hospital admitting privileges? Why should they slog through conventions devoting more time to counseling techniques than cutting-edge science? Now one group has finally had enough: Two days before the opening of the annual APA convention in Atlanta last August, a band of scientists announced the creation of a new society, one devoted to psychology as a discipline of science. It was a bold declaration of independence that has shaken the 96-year-old 90,000 member APA and forced it into the unfamiliar role of competing with another scientific organization, the fledgling American Psychological Society, for the affections of research academics—and for supremacy in the world of psychology. Reorganization Plan The split didn’t have to happen. Discontent among the scientists has been running high for years— long enough for the APA hierarchy, which has often been headed by research psychologists, to do something about it. In June 1987, the APA created three directorates, named one the Science Directorate, and gave it $500,000 to fund speciality research conferences, grants for graduate students, and congressional lobbying efforts. Further, the APA leadership authorized the development of a major institutional reorganization plan. Calling for the creation of five semiautonomous societies within the APA, including one specifically for research scientists, the plan was put to the APA membership for a vote this summer. But when the ballots of the rank and file were tallied in early August, the plan received only 43% of the vote, far short of the two-thirds majority required. To add insult to injury, private practitioner Stanley R. Graham, who was running for APA president on an anti-reorganization platform, triumphed in the same election. Even worse, the Science Directorate was forced to scale back many of its new programs in response to a financial emergency crippling the society. The three setbacks left scientists fuming. “The recent beginning movement to bring back scientists to APA and keep those who are still here has been sabotaged,” charged Kurt Salzinger of the APA Board of Scientific Affairs during the Atlanta convention. Indeed, Salzinger and his discontented colleagues were already fighting back. Two days before the convention, immediately after the election results were formally announced, scientists countered with the creation of their own society. The Assembly for Scientific and Applied Psychology, organized last year within the APA in anticipation of becoming one of the semi-autonomous factions under reorganization, was taken outside of the association and recast as the American Psychological Society, temporarily based in Norman, Okia. “We want to do it our own way,” APS president Janet Taylor Spence, a past president of APA, told The Scientist later. “We want to run our own affairs, and we don’t want [APA] sitting around like Big Daddy or Big Mommy giving us things.” As soon as the declaration had been made, the tensions that had been simmering all summer spewed forth. When the convention opened on August 12, rumors of behind-the-scenes election skull-druggery and shady deals ran rampant. Conference sessions on family counseling and cognition were overshadowed by gossip and wild speculation over the next moves of each group. Conflict Of Interest Sifting before the association’s 125-person council of representatives, APA president Ray Fowler was forced to deny charges by council members that funds had been improperly spent lobbying for and against the reorganization effort, that debate on the issue had been “gagged,” and that it was a clear conflict of interest for APS leaders to continue to sit on the APA’s board of directors. APA’s image, which has become one of an inept, virtually ungovernable organization, wasn’t helped by chief financial officer Jack McKay’s address to the council. He described how the “important distractions” of the sales of the popular magazine Psychology Today and the group’s Washington, D.C., buildings earlier this year had delayed the association’s realization that it had run up a $1.7 million deficit in 1987. Against this backdrop of chaos and bitterness, the APS worked hard to promote itself. Although the APA had banned the nascent society of scientists from setting up a booth at the convention, the APS’s blue and white logo was very much in evidence on buttons and folders. APS leaders recruited converts, speaking informally to colleagues on behalf of the new group. They also flatly denied an insidious rumor that the APS intended to sue the APA in hopes that a court would take APA’s scientific journal program away and award it to the APS. By the end of the meeting, the APS counted 1,500 members, a total encouraging to the group’s pioneers, yet still smaller than most of APA’s 45 divisions. Even a mature APS wouldn’t likely boast a membership of more than 45,000 psychologists, according to the new body’s most optimistic scientists. And since only one-third of APS members are expected to be converts from the APA—with the rest made up of psychologists expected to hold memberships in both societies and scientists previously unaffiliated with the APA—no one predicts that the APA membership size would be seriously impacted by the APS. So why all the fuss? The perceived threat to the APA goes far beyond the competition for bodies. What worries the APA is that it will lose its claim as the flagship organization for psychology in this country. “They want very much to say clearly, without dispute, that APA is the leading group for both the practice and discipline of psychology,” says APS past president Charles Kiesler, a former executive director of the APA. The existence of the new association makes that impossible. Even worse, it’s likely that the APS and the APA will eventually find themselves lobbying different sides of the same issue. “That possibility underlies a lot of this continuing emotionality,” says Kiesler. Kiesler, a social psychologist, has studied the success of hospitalization for mental illness. His results show that organized systems of care outside hospitals are just as effective and “certainly cheaper” than hospitalization. But if the APS lobbied for policies based on his findings, the APA would be most vexed it currently is backing a strong drive to strengthen hospital admitting privileges for its members. “One group says we want certain professional privileges,” speculates Kiesler. “The other side might say that what you want privileges for doesn’t work.” Without a doubt, the existence of the APS has put the APA on the defensive, forcing it to engage in what psychotherapist Arthur L. Kovaks, who was among those defeated in the APA presidential election, calls “a battle for the hearts and minds of the scientists.” And naturally, the association isn’t adverse to using a bit of psychological warfare. One tactic has been to appeal to the defectors’ loyalty to their profession. Leonard Goodstein, APA executive vice president until he was forced to resign in the wake of the APA’s financial crisis and its reorganization conflict, argues that disciplines with a multiplicity of associations—such as math and biology—are “among the weaker groups in Washington, D.C.” Major Goal Thus, despite the anger of many APA loyalists, the association is actively trying to communicate its willingness to accommodate the wayward scientists, says president Ray Fowler. Meeting the needs of the research academics in the APA is a “major goal” for the rest of his year as president, Fowler claims, and he was scheduled to meet with the APA board of directors last week to discuss how to keep the association together. And as the dust begins to settle, there are signs that the two groups may one day be able to coexist peaceably. Many of the leaders of the new society are maintaining their APA memberships, some citing what James McGaugh, APA’s first chief scientific adviser until he resigned earlier this year, refers to as a “long and sentimental attachment” to an organization they have been part of for decades. After all, the founders of the new society include 12 former presidents of the APA and two current members of the APA’s board of directors. There are even optimists—among them APA president Ray Fowler and Art Kovaks—who predict that a merger of the two groups lies in the future. Still, not everyone is eager to win back the scientists. At the August meeting of the APA council of representatives, angry practitioners introduced a motion to ban APA board members from serving in the APS. The motion was defeated, reintroduced, and left hanging when time ran out. And the psychological reality of the situation is that bruised feelings take a good deal of time to heal. “It’s hurtful to be told, ‘We don’t like you. We’re going to build our clubhouse down the street,’ “the APA’s Fowler admitted at the convention. Added APA board of directors member Lenore E. Walker, “We all have broken hearts.”

Scientists Divorce Practitioners: Split In The American Psychological Association

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