AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

The two major psychoanalytic organizations in the United States, the American Academy of Psychoanalysis (Academy) and the American Psychoanalytic Association (American), now share similar theoretical orientations and are working closely together in the Psychoanalytic Consortium. However, this has not always been the case.

The Academy was formed as a reaction against perceived thought control efforts by certain officers of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, a member of the American, which demanded conformity to a sharply restricted view of the intrapsychic libido theory. The Academy's orientation was that, in addition to intrapsychic dynamics, biological facts, interpersonal relations, the family, and the broader culture were all significant in personality development and pathology. Thus instead of a unitary theory, the Academy accepted that multiple interacting factors were significant. From its very beginning, the Academy established a democratic and scientific organization, where divergence, dialogue, and creative growth in psychoanalysis were strongly encouraged.

The split in American psychoanalysis started in 1941, at a business meeting of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, when Karen Horney was disqualified as a training analyst because she was disturbing the candidates with her ideas about culture. A number of analytic institutes split off from the American, and in 1955 Clara Thompson called a meeting of eminent psychoanalysts. Amongst those present were Franz Alexander, Abram Kardiner, Jules Masserman, and Sándor Radó, who all encouraged the formation of another national psychoanalytic organization where there would be freedom to exchange ideas in psychoanalysis and with other scientific disciplines. Franz Alexander (Alexander and Selesnick, 1966), a former president of the American, stated that the premature standardization and rigidity of teaching in the American was too past-oriented and not sufficiently creative and future-oriented. Psychoanalysis was still a developing field and the exchange of clinical experience as well as input from science and the humanities was crucial. Conformity would only stifle the growth and development of psychoanalysis as a science. Tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity are a necessary condition for creativity.

The Academy was established in 1956. Under its constitution, the Academy admits individual members and not institutes, so as not to interfere with the freedom of each institute's jointly determined theoretical approach and politics. The first president of the Academy was a woman, Janet Rioch Bard, and many other eminent medical psychoanalysts, both men and women, have been elected president since then.

It is interesting that the Academy was similar to the Kleinian group in England, since both can trace their origins to Sándor Ferenczi, who maintained the importance of interpersonal relations and the culture. Ferenczi focused more on maternal nurturance during infancy and relationships in childhood. He also stressed the importance of empathic connection in treatment, especially with more difficult patients, so as to undo trauma or deprivation and provide a corrective emotional experience. He also explored the transference/counter-transference relationship between therapist and patient. Both Thompson and Klein were analyzed by Ferenczi, who strongly influenced their approach. Horney (1922) had rejected Freud's explanation of feminine psychology as due to penis envy and the castration complex, and she stressed that femininity was inborn, being shaped by interpersonal relations and the culture.

The members of the Academy have made important contributions not only to individual psychoanalytic treatment and theory, especially with more troubled patients, but also in psychosomatics, and family and group therapy. Current research in ethology and direct infant observation have validated the importance of an attuned attachment to the mother during the pre-oedipal period, and anthropological research has found that the oedipal conflict is not universal but culturally variant.

In later years, the American reversed its rigid adherence to a unitary theory and embraced the inclusive and democratic ideals that were the very foundation of the Academy. Now both the Academy and the American consider divergent theoretical orientations and include findings from anthropology, culture, and group and family therapy.

Freud was an accomplished researcher in the neurosciences and published his laboratory findings. He was aware that memory was stored in the brain cells and transmitted through synapses. Freud did attempt to develop a neurophysiological method in his "Project for a Scientific Psychology" (1950c [1895]), but not having the technology to integrate the mind and the brain, he focused on the mind. Part of the problem in psychoanalysis was that it did not have a hard and firm scientific foundation. In the resulting search for certainty, a unitary theory was embraced by classical analysts to give the illusion of scientific validity. This contributed to the split in the psychoanalytic movement in the United States, and the division in England. However, Freud himself was aware that his metapsychology was weak, and that psychoanalysis was not the hard science that he had hoped it to become.

Increasingly the technology exists that can allow one to integrate understandings of the mind and the brain, especially with imaging techniques. The new findings of neurobiology will serve to provide a scientific foundation to psychoanalysis, and further help to bring the psychoanalytic movement together. Thus, Freud's hope that psychoanalysis could become a hard science is still alive; work that reduces the mind/body split could yet ensure that theory and therapy become grounded on a firm scientific basis.

Both the American Psychoanalytic Association and the American Academy of Psychoanalysis have now continued with similar theoretical orientations concerning biological, intrapsychic, interpersonal, and cultural factors in personality development and pathology. However, they have diverged in their methods of sustaining membership. The American has included psychologists and social workers besides psychiatrists, but has remained wholly psychoanalytic. The Academy has included psychiatrists with some analytic training or who are analytically oriented, but remained medical. Accordingly, the Academy changed its name to reflect this change to the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry. During the presidency of Samuel Slipp, the Academy was established as an official Affiliate of the American Psychiatric Association. Now, only the Academy holds its annual meeting in the same location as the American Psychiatric Association. Both the American and the Academy have remained in the Consortium to further psychoanalysis together, and they continue their friendly and cooperative relationship.

Samuel Slipp

See also: American Psychoanalytic Association; New York Psychoanalytic Institute.

Bibliography

Alexander, Franz, and Selesnick, Sheldon T. (1966). The history of psychiatry. New York: Harper and Row.

Horney, Karen. (1922). On the genesis of the castration complex in women. In H. Kelman (Ed.) Feminine psychology. New York: W. W. Norton, 1967.

Rothgeb, Carrie Lee. (1973). Abstracts of the standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. New York: International Universities Press.