Association is a great American idea and a notion at the heart of world civilization. A major framework of association is mutual aid through fellowship. One of the constitutional foundations of our country is “association.” Local, state, and federal governments not only associate with various levels of satisfaction and discontent, but the participatory fabric of the nation is made up of various leagues, institutes, centers, councils, and clubs. Some call this the pursuit of happiness, but we understand it more plainly as self-interest.
Nevertheless, the liberty principle reminds us that we have a right to associate and not to associate.
Many suggest in the digital age, there are doubts among younger generations about why you should continue shaping state psychological associations (SPTAs), your local professional home, if you will. Some have suggested that the profession’s concern with ‘the public interest’ may be overdetermined in a world where people want to immediately understand what the literal return on their investment in the form of membership dues will be.
With these and other musings on my mind, I want to appeal to the psychology graduate students and early career psychologists (ECPs). You are unequivocally the future of our associations, its thought-leaders, and the actors who will create, shape, and define our next developments. The steps we take together in the coming days, months, and years can ensure that your vital energies take the stage and fulfill the acts many have been waiting for.
When we pay close attention to the profound experiences of our emerging leaders, as a generation, we can truly grasp the challenges, unique obstacles, and hindrances they face in providing for their families, unlike those experienced by previous generations within the profession.
These burdens that graduate students and ECPs face demand struggle, grit, and resilience. Achieving graduate degrees and licensure in the past would have secured what many describe as ‘the American dream.’ It is not that previous generations did not have their own struggles. But the hard truth of this moment of danger is that higher education no longer guarantees better prospects.
Emerging leaders put off their personal and family interests to learn, research, and gather skills, placing immediate gratification of themselves aside. When the previous generation of psychologists did this, they were able to secure, by a reasonable measure of comfort, their own and their loved ones’ needs. That is the difference between the generations, and our new strategies must take on the weight to address the immediate dilemma and its far-reaching consequences.
The pursuit of scientific discovery, research, and reflection on mental health, and caring for those burdened and in need of healing, will not be easily compensated. While previous generations never had it easy, over the last three to four decades, social services have not simply declined but have been attacked, regardless of the party in power. This has resulted in a false consensus that those pursuing human care and development can be taken for granted if not insulted.
The emerging generation of psychologists step into this ethical vacuum.
As the next generation tends to those facing dread, trauma, and alienation, and those wanting to overcome fears and anxieties toward a greater sense of wholeness and prospects of success, their own quality of life has been and may be subverted in the future. If we don’t face this reality, this will disturb and disrupt our community formations. Social and economic disasters often degrade the daily practice of psychology. As young professionals who have delayed pursuit of self-interest in a society that elevates the individual while talking about families and communities, our associations find ourselves amidst hostile social forces.
Our SPTAs will not grow as a gathering force by pretending there will be no impending confrontations that require collective defense of the profession. While it is true that SPTAs lobby, negotiate impediments to compensation by insurance authorities, offer continuing education, provide carefully curated information, and ultimately manifest a professional home, SPTAs are both for the accompaniment of those who need our help, and also for the preservation of our own capacities in precarious circumstances.
We cannot, as SPTAs, be the last to intervene when crises are looming, as these affect the terms of labor of our respective members. Obviously, the use of innovative technologies may aid us, but they will not save us. Human interaction will always remain healthy and necessary.
- We associate to protect ourselves and our families so we can lift up as we climb, upholding the standards that generations before came to expect for professionals who delayed personal advancement with the tormented and injured in mind.
- We associate, understanding that violence and chaos have a long history, but it takes a particular form today that we as professionals can no longer tolerate. It is not a question of finding the words. It is about turning words into deeds.
- We associate with self-interest to defend appropriate standards of care and quality of life for those we serve and ourselves.
- We associate to make difficult choices together. We will either take risks that the profession was not willing to take in the past, or we will jeopardize our own battles for survival and struggles for a good life.
- We associate cultivating our professional home, the primary community where members anchor and nurture their professional identities, connections, and growth.
As I pen this, I am currently reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky’s massive novel examines penetrating themes of not only faith, moral consequence, and redemption but also association. Interestingly, Dostoevsky suggests in his Author’s Note that it is “time to move beyond fruitless words and wasting our precious time!” As youthful science-practitioners who are living for change, stretch forth your hands in the service of expanding your vision and associating in memorable and meaningful ways. Join and maintain your membership within your SPTA.