ACEP’s Next Chapter: The Time Has Come Again
ACEP has held a very special place in my heart since before it officially existed. As its founding president, I’ve had the privilege of helping midwife an idea that began with a handful of passionate pioneers and grew into an international professional association that has contributed so much to the worldwide acceptance, development, and responsible practice of energy psychology.
That’s why the recent announcement about ACEP’s financial challenges touches me so deeply. I know how much heart, dedication, and hard work have gone into building and sustaining this organization. I’m grateful to everyone who has carried that responsibility over the years, including our current board and executive director, who have been navigating some exceptionally difficult decisions.
I also want to offer a broader perspective on what ACEP is experiencing, because I believe something important is happening here that goes well beyond financial difficulties.
Two Challenges, One Opportunity
First, ACEP is hardly alone. Many professional associations that historically depended on conferences and membership revenue are struggling to adapt to changing expectations and economics. Large hotel-based conferences have become increasingly expensive to produce and attend. Online conferences offer greater accessibility, but they also compete in a world overflowing with educational content and competing demands on people’s attention.
The challenge goes beyond choosing between in-person and online events to discovering what kinds of experiences and ongoing value people are now willing to invest their time, energy, and money in.
But there’s a second challenge that’s just as important: revitalization. Every pioneering organization eventually faces a particular developmental turning point. When its original innovations begin entering the mainstream, the very success it helped create changes the environment in which it operates.
What once made the organization indispensable no longer distinguishes it in quite the same way. At that point, sustaining the organization requires more than managing expenses, preserving programs, and recruiting members. It also requires discovering where the next frontier of meaningful innovation lies and stepping forward to help lead the way.
I believe ACEP has arrived at such a turning point. The opportunity, then, is to discover not only what ACEP can pioneer next, but what distinctive value that pioneering role can provide to members, the profession, and the wider world.
Remembering Why We Came Together
When ACEP was founded, energy psychology was a fragmented collection of pioneers, approaches, and emerging possibilities. We recognized that we could accomplish far more together than separately.
Our rallying cry was simple: “The time has come for the EP world to unite.”
And we did.
ACEP helped build a marvelously collaborative professional community, advance research, establish educational opportunities, encourage responsible practice, and give the field a stronger collective presence.
That was our pioneering mission then.
But pioneering organizations cannot remain pioneers simply by preserving what they pioneered.
Which brings me to a question I’ve been carrying in my heart: What has the time come for now?
A New Horizon for Energy Psychology
I’ve spent much of my professional life helping people and organizations recognize when the approaches that brought them this far are no longer sufficient for the challenges and possibilities ahead.
In recent years, I’ve come to believe that the broader human potential movement is at just such a turning point.
For decades, we’ve developed an extraordinary assortment of approaches for healing psychospiritual wounds, alleviating distress, overcoming limitations, and expanding human possibilities. Energy psychology has made meaningful contributions to that evolution.
Yet something essential has remained underdeveloped: Too much of the human potential field still encourages people to move from one helpful technique, program, or modality to another without a coherent, developmentally sequenced roadmap to effectively and efficiently guide their growth.
Meanwhile, the world our clients are navigating demands capacities that go well beyond symptom relief, trauma healing, and personal improvement. They need greater psychospiritual maturity, resilience, discernment, clarity of purpose, relational competence, and an enhanced ability to contribute constructively amid enormous personal and societal change.
I’ve come to call this next developmental horizon Human Potential 3.0.
It’s the larger vision underlying my SPARC Blueprint™, including the version I’ve developed specifically for Human Potential Professionals. Its premise is that the next era of our field must move beyond helping people heal and improve their lives to also helping them systematically develop the psychospiritual maturity and practical capacities to navigate today’s and tomorrow’s accelerating complexity, fulfill more meaningful purposes, and contribute more constructively to the world around them.
I believe energy psychology has important contributions to make within that macrovision.
And I can easily see ACEP becoming a pioneering leader in helping the broader human potential field bring about its next wave of contributions to humanity.
The Next Chapter Belongs to Today's ACEP
I’m sharing this vision as an ACEP elder, not as a proposal to take the reins of the organization again.
Nearly three decades ago, those of us who founded ACEP recognized an emerging need, gathered people around a shared purpose, contributed our time and resources, and did the work necessary to bring an organization into existence.
Today, that responsibility belongs to ACEP’s current leadership and members.
If ACEP is to activate its next era of pioneering leadership, it will require members, leaders, and funders who are willing to come together around a compelling next-generation vision, refine it through thoughtful dialogue, develop viable strategies, contribute the necessary legwork, and mobilize the financial resources to make it sustainable.
That vision doesn’t have to be precisely the one I’ve outlined here. In fact, I hope it will grow richer through the insights, creativity, and wisdom of the people who now make up ACEP.
What matters is that ACEP reinvigorates around a future compelling enough to motivate members and donors to actively invest themselves in creating it.
Of course, ACEP’s immediate financial and operational challenges must be addressed. The board’s efforts to stabilize our organization deserve vigorous member support. But financial stabilization and renewed pioneering relevance need to proceed together. My perspective is that a sustainable future requires both.
The Time Has Come Again
I would love to see ACEP’s members engage in a genuine conversation about what the energy psychology world now needs to unite around – and how that shared purpose can open ACEP’s next chapter of flourishing.
What emerging human needs are we uniquely positioned to address? What role can energy psychology play in advancing a more coherent and developmentally mature approach to human potential? What educational innovations, collaborations, research priorities, and forms of professional community would make ACEP more relevant and compelling than ever?
These are questions worthy of the pioneering spirit that gave ACEP its beginning – and equally worthy of a renewed pioneering spirit that will give ACEP its future.
As someone who helped bring this organization into the world, nothing would delight me more than seeing today’s ACEP community discover and actualize a compelling NEW answer to the question that originally inspired us into existence:
The time has come once again. For what?
With enduring love for ACEP and everyone who has helped it become what it is,
David Gruder
About the Author
David Gruder, PhD, DCEP, was the founding president of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP). A multi-award-winning psychologist, author, educator, and organizational development consultant, he has devoted decades to helping individuals and organizations integrate personal growth, psychological development, leadership, and social responsibility.
