Privacy Policy
Preamble and Acceptance
This Privacy Policy explains how American College of Psychoanalysts ORG, available at https://americancollegeofpsychoanalysts.org, processes personal information associated with access to, navigation of, communication with, and use of the website.
The American College of Psychoanalysts ORG is presented as an international academic-editorial and institutional digital project dedicated to publishing academic standards, editorial policies, research-oriented materials, institutional guidelines, psychoanalytic scholarship, educational content, and related intellectual resources.
The website may publish articles, essays, reference materials, academic policies, scholarly standards, research discussions, bibliographic resources, institutional statements, educational guidelines, and other content concerning psychoanalysis, psychology, mental health, psychiatry, neuroscience, ethics, education, and related fields.
The website is not a hospital, clinic, medical practice, psychotherapy service, psychoanalytic treatment service, telehealth provider, emergency service, or professional licensing authority.
The website does not provide clinical consultations, psychoanalytic treatment, psychotherapy, diagnosis, medical or psychological assessment, prescriptions, individualized treatment plans, or emergency mental health care.
The publication of academic standards, policies, codes, criteria, or institutional guidelines through this website does not, by itself, mean that such materials are governmental regulations, state licensing requirements, accreditation standards issued by a recognized accrediting agency, or legally binding rules applicable to unrelated institutions.
The name “American College of Psychoanalysts ORG,” the use of the word “College,” and institutional or academic terminology do not, by themselves, constitute representations that the website is an accredited postsecondary institution, university, state-authorized degree-granting institution, professional board, or government-recognized accreditor.
Any future claim concerning accreditation, academic degree authority, state approval, professional licensure, continuing education credit, governmental recognition, or institutional affiliation must be supported by accurate and verifiable documentation applicable to that specific claim.
By accessing or using the website, users acknowledge this Privacy Policy. When consent is legally required for a particular processing activity, it will be obtained in a manner appropriate to the applicable law.
Applicable United States federal and state privacy laws will be observed when their statutory requirements are satisfied, including, where applicable, the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and federal consumer protection law.
Where Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the General Data Protection Regulation, applies territorially and materially to a particular processing activity, the corresponding GDPR requirements will also be observed.
Data Controller and Data Protection Officer (DPO)
For transparency purposes, American College of Psychoanalysts ORG is the public institutional-editorial designation used for the website available at https://americancollegeofpsychoanalysts.org.
The use of that designation does not, by itself, establish the existence of a corporation, licensed educational institution, accredited university, physical campus, medical organization, clinic, professional licensing board, or government agency.
The person or organization that actually determines the purposes and essential means of a particular personal information processing activity will be treated as the relevant controller, business, or equivalent responsible party under the law applicable to that activity.
Dr. Jonathan Reed is presented as an editorial and institutional persona associated with the website. This presentation does not independently establish or verify a professional license, academic appointment, board certification, governmental position, or appointment as Data Protection Officer.
The privacy contact channel is dr.jonathanreed@americancollegeofpsychoanalysts.org.
United States privacy law does not generally require every informational website to appoint a Data Protection Officer. If the GDPR, UK GDPR, or another applicable regime requires formal designation of a DPO for a particular operation, the appropriate information will be disclosed as required.
Legal Definitions
For purposes of this Policy, the following terms are used according to applicable law:
- Personal information or personal data: information relating to an identified or identifiable individual, as defined by applicable law.
- Sensitive personal information: information receiving heightened protection because of its nature, which may include health information, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, precise geolocation, biometric information, or other categories recognized by applicable law.
- Processing: collection, use, analysis, organization, storage, disclosure, transmission, modification, or deletion of personal information.
- Consumer or data subject: an individual whose personal information is processed and who receives rights under applicable law.
- Controller: a person or organization determining the purposes and essential means of processing under applicable data protection law.
- Service provider or processor: an organization processing personal information for another party according to applicable legal requirements.
- Consent: an affirmative authorization satisfying the requirements applicable to a specific processing activity.
- Academic standard: an educational or editorial criterion adopted or published by the project, unless expressly identified and verified as originating from a legally recognized third-party authority.
- Institutional policy: a governance, editorial, academic, research, or operational policy adopted for the website or associated project.
- Clinical data: health information collected or generated for diagnosis, treatment, assessment, therapy, patient care, or similar clinical purposes.
- Profiling: systematic or automated processing used to evaluate, classify, predict, or infer characteristics concerning an individual where recognized under applicable law.
- Cookies: files, identifiers, or similar technologies used for technical functionality, security, preferences, analytics, advertising, or other disclosed purposes.
Information We Collect
Information Voluntarily Provided
When users contact the website, send institutional correspondence, comment on a policy, propose academic material, request information, or use an available form, the website may process information such as name, email address, voluntarily provided affiliation, subject, and message content.
General website channels are not intended for medical records, psychotherapy notes, psychoanalytic session transcripts, diagnoses, prescriptions, psychological assessments, patient histories, or other clinical information.
Technical and Navigation Information
Technical information may be processed during access, including Internet Protocol address, date and time, browser, operating system, device type, requested pages, approximate referral source, technical identifiers, and security events.
Analytics Information
Where analytics technologies are actually implemented, information concerning page views, approximate session duration, referral sources, clicks, interactions, and technical performance may be processed.
Academic and Institutional Communications
Communications concerning standards, research, policies, publications, scholarly collaboration, conferences, academic inquiries, institutional projects, or editorial matters may contain names, professional contact information, affiliations, and information voluntarily supplied by the sender.
Such information should be used only for purposes reasonably compatible with the relevant communication.
Policy Consultation and Feedback
If the website invites comments on proposed academic standards or institutional policies, the information provided may be processed to review feedback, document consultation, communicate with participants, and revise relevant materials.
Submitting feedback does not automatically create membership, employment, faculty status, accreditation status, contractual rights, or regulatory authority.
The American College of Psychoanalysts ORG does not intentionally collect clinical data for diagnosis, patient assessment, psychotherapy, psychoanalytic treatment, or individualized healthcare.
Legal Bases for Processing
In the United States, privacy obligations vary according to the nature of the information, the responsible party, the consumer's location, the purposes of processing, and the statutory scope of the applicable federal or state law.
Where the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, applies to the responsible business, personal information will be handled consistently with California Civil Code section 1798.100 and following provisions and applicable California regulations.
Where COPPA applies, online collection from children under 13 will comply with 15 U.S.C. sections 6501 through 6506 and 16 CFR Part 312, including applicable notice, parental consent, minimization, security, and retention requirements.
Where processing is subject to the GDPR, a valid legal basis under Article 6 will be identified. Processing of health information or another special category will additionally require a condition permitted under Article 9.
Depending on the specific GDPR-covered activity, a legal basis may include consent, performance of a contract, compliance with a legal obligation, protection of vital interests, or legitimate interests where legally permissible and appropriately balanced.
Where UK GDPR applies, corresponding lawful bases and safeguards will be observed.
Where Brazil's Law No. 13,709/2018 applies to a specific operation, the relevant basis under Articles 7 or 11 will be identified.
Where Peru's Law No. 29733 applies, the relevant consent, transparency, proportionality, security, and data-subject requirements will be observed.
Availability of the website worldwide does not automatically subject every processing activity to every privacy law in every jurisdiction.
Purposes of Processing
Personal information may be processed, as appropriate, to:
- operate and secure the website;
- deliver academic, institutional, and editorial pages;
- respond to correspondence and inquiries;
- manage academic-policy feedback where offered;
- administer institutional and editorial communications;
- manage comments or submissions where such functionality exists;
- record privacy and cookie preferences;
- prevent fraud, spam, cybersecurity threats, and unauthorized access;
- identify technical failures;
- produce website-performance and audience statistics where legally appropriate;
- understand aggregate interest in academic and psychoanalytic materials;
- improve navigation and accessibility;
- maintain authorship, source, policy-version, and publication records;
- document institutional policy development;
- comply with applicable legal obligations;
- respond to valid judicial, regulatory, or governmental requests;
- establish, exercise, or defend legal rights;
- investigate security incidents.
Reading material concerning depression, trauma, psychosis, anxiety, suicide, sexuality, personality, or another mental health subject will not, by itself, cause the website to conclude that the visitor has that condition.
Sensitive Data and Mental Health
THE AMERICAN COLLEGE OF PSYCHOANALYSTS ORG DOES NOT INTENTIONALLY COLLECT CLINICAL DATA FOR DIAGNOSIS, PSYCHOANALYTIC TREATMENT, PSYCHOTHERAPY, CLINICAL SCREENING, OR PATIENT CARE.
The website may publish academic and educational content concerning mental illness, psychological distress, trauma, depression, anxiety, suicide, sexuality, personality, psychoanalytic concepts, psychiatry, and other potentially sensitive subjects.
READING AN ARTICLE ABOUT A MENTAL HEALTH CONDITION DOES NOT CAUSE THE WEBSITE TO DIAGNOSE THE READER WITH THAT CONDITION.
The website will not use a person's reading history alone to label the visitor as depressed, psychotic, traumatized, suicidal, narcissistic, anxious, or as having another mental health diagnosis or psychoanalytic structure.
Academic interest in psychopathology or psychoanalytic theory must not be confused with evidence about a reader's personal health status.
The website is not designed as a patient-record system, psychological assessment platform, or psychotherapy-record service.
Visitors should not transmit medical records, psychotherapy notes, identifiable clinical cases, diagnoses, prescriptions, or confidential health information through ordinary website channels.
If sensitive information is voluntarily and incidentally included in correspondence, receiving that information does not create a clinical record or treatment relationship.
Such information should be minimized, restricted, or deleted where appropriate and legally permissible.
Where GDPR Article 9 applies, health information and other special-category data will receive the corresponding protections.
Cookies and Tracking Technologies
The website may use cookies or comparable technologies for technical functionality, cybersecurity, privacy preferences, analytics, and other disclosed purposes.
- Strictly necessary cookies: technologies required to operate, secure, or provide essential website functionality.
- Functional cookies: technologies used to remember requested preferences.
- Analytics cookies: technologies used to understand aggregate audience behavior and website performance.
- Advertising or cross-context behavioral technologies: technologies used for advertising or related tracking only where actually implemented and subject to applicable law.
Optional technologies should not be classified as strictly necessary when they are not essential to the requested function.
Where consent is legally required, optional technologies will be subject to an appropriate consent mechanism.
Where the CCPA applies and a practice constitutes sale or sharing of personal information under California law, applicable opt-out rights will be provided.
Where legally required, recognized opt-out preference signals, including Global Privacy Control, will be honored.
The website should not create sensitive behavioral advertising profiles solely because a visitor reads mental health or psychoanalytic materials.
Sharing with Third Parties
The website does not have, as its stated institutional purpose, the commercial sale of readers' personal information.
Personal information may be disclosed on a limited basis to providers necessary for website operation, including hosting, cybersecurity, content delivery, email, forms, backups, analytics, and technical infrastructure.
Each provider may act as a service provider, processor, contractor, independent business, or controller depending on applicable law and the actual arrangement.
Information should be limited to what is reasonably necessary for the relevant purpose.
Related Projects and Domains
The website may reference other projects or websites using related American College names or connected editorial identities.
A related name, link, design, or editorial relationship does not automatically establish that two websites are the same legal entity, share the same controller, or may freely exchange personal information.
Personal information may be transferred among related projects only where an appropriate purpose, legal basis, transparency mechanism, and security framework exist.
If advertising technology or another practice qualifying as sale or sharing under California law is implemented, applicable notices and opt-out mechanisms will be provided when the CCPA applies.
Information may also be disclosed where required by applicable law, valid judicial process, regulatory demand, or the establishment or defense of legal rights.
International Data Transfers
Because the website is internationally accessible, technology providers may process information in the United States or other countries.
Where GDPR applies to a transfer outside the European Economic Area, an appropriate mechanism under Articles 44 through 49 will be considered, including an adequacy decision, Standard Contractual Clauses, or another legally available mechanism.
Where UK GDPR applies, corresponding international transfer safeguards will be used where required.
Where Brazilian LGPD applies to a particular operation, Articles 33 through 36 and applicable regulations of the Brazilian National Data Protection Authority will be observed.
Where Peru's Law No. 29733 applies, applicable international transfer and security requirements will be respected.
International processing does not eliminate obligations concerning security, transparency, purpose limitation, and proportionality.
Retention and Deletion
Personal information will be retained only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was processed, subject to applicable legal, security, archival, institutional-record, evidentiary, and rights-protection requirements.
General correspondence may be retained for a reasonable period necessary to respond, document institutional communications, prevent abuse, or protect legal rights.
Academic or institutional records concerning authorship, policy development, publication history, version control, permissions, or attribution may be retained where reasonably necessary.
Sensitive information unnecessarily included in ordinary correspondence should be minimized or deleted where appropriate.
Where COPPA applies, personal information from children will not be retained longer than reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, subject to applicable legal requirements.
Where California law applies, deletion requests will be addressed subject to statutory exceptions.
Where GDPR applies, the storage-limitation principle under Article 5 will be observed.
Rights of Individuals
California Rights
Where the CCPA applies, eligible California consumers may have rights including:
- the right to know categories and specific pieces of personal information, subject to applicable requirements;
- the right to request deletion, subject to statutory exceptions;
- the right to request correction of inaccurate personal information;
- the right to opt out of sale or sharing of personal information where applicable;
- the right to limit certain uses or disclosures of sensitive personal information where legally applicable;
- the right to receive required information about sources, purposes, and categories of recipients;
- the right not to receive unlawful discriminatory treatment for exercising applicable privacy rights.
Automated Processing
Where California regulations concerning automated decisionmaking technology apply to a specific business and processing activity, corresponding access, notice, opt-out, risk-assessment, or related requirements will be addressed according to applicable law.
The website is not intended to make automated clinical diagnoses or professional licensing decisions about visitors.
European Rights
Where the GDPR applies, individuals may have rights under Articles 12 through 22, including access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection, withdrawal of consent, and rights associated with certain automated decisions.
Where UK GDPR applies, corresponding rights will be respected.
Other Applicable Rights
Where Brazilian LGPD applies, rights under Article 18 will be observed.
Where Peru's Law No. 29733 applies, corresponding access, rectification, cancellation, opposition, and other applicable rights will be respected.
How to Exercise Your Rights
Privacy requests may be submitted to dr.jonathanreed@americancollegeofpsychoanalysts.org.
Reasonable verification may be required to prevent unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or deletion of personal information.
The website should not request excessive verification information where a less intrusive method is sufficient.
Requests will be evaluated according to the jurisdiction, statutory scope, nature of the request, and personal information actually processed.
Where applicable law permits an authorized agent to submit a request, reasonable evidence of authority may be requested.
If a request cannot be granted in whole or in part, the reason may be provided where required by applicable law.
Information Security
The website seeks to maintain reasonable technical and organizational safeguards appropriate to the nature and risk of the information processed.
Measures may include HTTPS, software updates, authentication controls, administrative access restrictions, least-privilege practices, backups, malicious-traffic protection, technical logging, and service-provider review.
Identifiable clinical records should not be used as ordinary website-development, testing, policy-development, research-demo, or artificial-intelligence test data.
No Internet-connected system can be guaranteed completely secure.
Security is therefore treated as an ongoing process involving prevention, detection, response, recovery, and improvement.
Where applicable California regulations require risk assessments or cybersecurity audits for a covered business, those requirements should be implemented according to their statutory and regulatory scope.
Where a security breach triggers notification duties under applicable federal or state law, affected individuals and competent authorities will be notified according to the relevant legal requirements.
Children and Minors
The website is designed for an academic, institutional, and general adult audience and is not intended primarily as a website directed to children under 13.
Under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and 16 CFR Part 312, specific requirements apply to covered websites and online services directed to children under 13 and to certain operators with actual knowledge that they collect personal information online from children under 13.
The website does not intentionally solicit personal information from children under 13 through ordinary contact or institutional-policy functionality.
Where verifiable parental consent is legally required, an unsupported statement by a child will not replace the legally required parental-consent process.
If the website learns that personal information was collected from a child under 13 under circumstances requiring action under COPPA, appropriate steps will be taken according to applicable law.
Children and adolescents should not be encouraged to publicly disclose diagnoses, abuse, self-harm, sexual information, family conflict, or other sensitive personal information through comments or forms.
Where GDPR or UK GDPR rules concerning children's data apply to a particular service, their applicable requirements will also be observed.
Changes to this Policy
This Policy may be revised as laws, regulations, technologies, academic functions, institutional practices, or website operations change.
The Policy should be reassessed before implementing user accounts, student portals, admissions, enrollment, tuition, certificates, examinations, credential verification, newsletters, behavioral advertising, artificial intelligence tools, formal membership systems, research-participant databases, or other functionality that materially changes personal information processing.
If the website begins operating as a formal educational provider, degree-granting institution, clinical service, research institution collecting identifiable participant data, or child-directed service, a separate legal and privacy review must occur before launch.
The current version will be made available on this website.
Supervisory and Enforcement Authorities
In the United States, privacy, educational representations, and consumer-protection matters may fall within the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission, state Attorneys General, the California Privacy Protection Agency where applicable, and other competent regulators according to subject matter and statutory scope.
California privacy rights may additionally fall within the jurisdiction of California authorities when the CCPA applies.
Where GDPR applies, individuals may have the right to lodge a complaint with a competent European supervisory authority.
Where UK GDPR applies, the UK Information Commissioner's Office may have supervisory jurisdiction.
Where Brazilian LGPD applies, the Brazilian National Data Protection Authority may have jurisdiction.
Where Peruvian data protection law applies, the competent Peruvian personal-data protection authority may have jurisdiction.
Contact
Questions concerning this Privacy Policy or privacy rights may be submitted to:
American College of Psychoanalysts ORG
Website: https://americancollegeofpsychoanalysts.org
Editorial and institutional contact: Dr. Jonathan Reed.
Email: dr.jonathanreed@americancollegeofpsychoanalysts.org
Nature of the website: international institutional, academic-editorial, policy, and psychoanalytic educational project.
Primary jurisdiction: USA.
Last Updated
Original effective date: April 3, 2020.
Legal consolidation of this version: September 1, 2026.