History of AAP
by
Rogers H. Wright, Ph.D.
The Association for the
Advancement of psychology (AAP) was founded in early 1974 following a very
turbulent Winter session of the American Psychological Association Council of
Representatives. AAP was actually
psychology’s second political action group, preceded in 1972 by the Council
for the Advancement of the Psychological Professions and Sciences (CAPPS). American Psychology, which for the first 80 years of its
existence had had no organized public policy arm whatsoever, now had two.
These developments reflected the emergence of professional psychology as
a major national force in psychology.
From its inception,
American psychology was essentially an academic pursuit concerned primarily with
research. When psychological service delivery existed at all, it was
provided primarily through psychological “clinics” housed in university
settings, typically as an adjunct of research programs.
The onset of World War II
brought dramatic changes. The
military’s needs for classification of individuals on factors such as
intelligence and aptitude, and for treatment of the psychological casualties of
World War II, and the public’s developing awareness and acceptance of the need
for support psychological services, combined to create support for the emergence
of psychological service delivery.
By the late 1950s, the
increasing numbers of practitioners delivering psychological services generated
widespread concern about issues such as licensing laws for psychologists,
federal funding for health service delivery, and funding for training and
research. The concurrent emergence of prepaid third party health
insurance, which initially excluded reimbursement for psychological services,
began to impose severe restrictions on the delivery of psychological services.
Psychological practitioners quickly became sensitized to the importance
of their participation in public policy and political activities.
Initial concern with
public policy issues was limited to the so-called “clinical wing” of the APA
and became a paramount issue in the organizations’ developing struggle between
applied interests and academic-scientific interests.
In the early 1970s APA’s Board of Directors, beset with
intraorganizational struggles and pressed from within by practitioners, decided
that public policy and political advocacy activities should be developed outside
the APA. The Board endorsed a
proposal by a group of nationally visible psychology practitioners to develop an
independent advocacy arm for psychology.
Psychology’s first
“lobbying arm,” CAPPS, was founded by Drs.
Theodore Blau, Nicholas Cummings, Melvin Gravitz, Ernest Lawrence, Helen
Sunikian, Jack Wiggins, and Rogers Wright, chairman.
CAPPS quickly became a national force in psychology’s professional
affairs and was directly responsible for the recognition of psychologists as
reimbursable providers under the Federal Government Employees Health Plan, one
of the world’s largest health delivery systems.
Concurrently, CAPPS founders were among the highly visible and articulate
leaders of the practitioner movement within APA, attempting to wrest
organizational and governance control from the academic and scientific interests
which had dominated APA governance throughout its existence. In such a context, it was perhaps inevitable that the
competing concerns would impact advocacy as well.
Charging the CAPPS
leadership with “lack of balance” and failure to advocate sufficiently for
academic and scientific interests, the APA sponsored the founding of its own
advocacy group, the Association for the Advancement of Psychology (AAP).
AAP was established with a large governing board composed of equal
numbers of representatives of APA’s major interest groups, practice, public
interest, and science.
The resulting
“troika,” composed of some 23 psychologists, was not only large and unwieldy
from its inception; but it was additionally burdened by another founding
principle, that its commitments and activities would at all times equally
reflect the interests of APA’s three major political groups.
This well-intended principle overlooked the reality that
(a)
issues neither arise nor are driven in all three areas simultaneously and
(b)
that public interest and research/academic psychologists were not as
committed to public policy advocacy as were practitioners.
Furthermore, psychology, after years of no active commitment to public
policy and advocacy, now had two independent major groups each committed to
represent psychology. Recognizing
the inherent dangers to the two competing organizations, the CAPPS and AAP
leadership merged the two organizations in 1975.
Concurrently, professional
interests within APA forced a reorganization of APA so that the needs of various
factions within APA could be more productively addressed and mediated through
“directorates” devoted to professional practice, academic-science, and
public interest. This functional
reorganization within APA allowed public policy issues of concern to one or more
of the factions within APA to be addressed by APA through the directorate
structure.
Consequently, much of the
support for AAP was further diminished, and over the span of several years,
AAP’s activity level became essentially moribund.
Its governance structure was reduced to a six-member Board, but
maintained the principle of equal representation from psychology’s three major
interests. There followed an
unfortunate spiral of diminished economic support, leading to further
limitations of advocacy and such a loss of visibility, credibility, and action
options that the organization essentially existed in name only.
Subsequent developments nationally and outside psychology, such as
continued reductions in support for research and training, the advent of managed
health care, and increasing limitations imposed on public policy actions by
APA’s tax-exempt status, dramatized psychology’s urgent need for an
effective policy and advocacy organization.
In this context, it became
widely apparent that AAP needed to be revitalized or a successor organization
established. Consequently, in 1989,
at the recommendation of the APA Chief Executive Officer, the AAP Board of
Trustees committed itself to revitalizing AAP by rebuilding its support base and
by developing an aggressive federal public policy advocacy program. As part of the revitalization process, AAP: (a) recruited a
new staff experienced with political action and fund raising, (b) required its
officers to have a history of personal involvement in advocacy; and (c) modified
its bylaws so that members of its Board of Trustees would represent AAP’s
members rather than interest groups within APA. AAP selected Rogers Wright as Executive Officer and charged
him with developing an effective advocacy program.
The new program has been
extremely successful in establishing a secure economic base, and in establishing
national visibility and credibility for the organization.
The activities of AAP’s political action committee, AAP/PLAN elevated
the political action committee to the 11th most active among all
health care political action committees nationally in recent years.
[Back
to Top]
