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An idea to survive for a quarter of a century must have vitality. It must have meaning to bring together able people with strong opinions. For some to move apart in two years, others in three and for all and more to come together again, with a new vision, twelve years later, it must be dynamic. The impact of this idea is evident in the Academy of Psychoanalysis’ influence as it moves in ever-widening circles across the globe.
For an idea to persist and produce, through intense disagreements, at time regrettably violent, more often silently obstructive and but occasionally even destructive, it must have resilience and toughness. While withstanding and containing such strife and flux, there has emerged a stronger sense of responsibility, a deeper awareness that reliability and dependability expressing integrity, commitment and dedication, mean decency to ourselves, to our colleagues and in our calling. This has happened in the face of powerful opposing trends, progressive and widespread.
Standards can only go up or down, goals constrict or widen. Our task is ever to elevate the lowest common denominator, extend and expand the higher. There is no wisdom in blinking present and projected, expanding, welfare programs and their effects on education, medicine, psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Only by looking to the future, tempered in our vicissitudes, can we continue to contribute creatively what we uniquely have to offer.
And what has been our record? What have we to show for the twenty-five years of our existence? We have an Institute continually being revitalized by a spirit of searching and innovation, new courses, revised programs, enhanced staff and improving ways of teaching. We have an able and earnest student body becoming increasingly international, a flow of graduates involving themselves in the variety of activities of our associated organizations and playing increasingly significant roles in societies, institutions and medical schools, all of which bespeaks an Ins