The Present Status of Organized Psychoanalysis in the United States1

No tradition has yet been established in the American Psychoanalytic Association with regard to whether or how the outgoing President should address the membership. Some have read a scientific paper; some have spoken at the annual dinner; and some have made no special communication. I have chosen to speak at this last meeting of members at which I preside, so that my perspective might be at its optimum, marking, as it does, the penultimate meeting in fifteen years of continuous service on both the Executive Council and the two successive training organizations—the old Council on Professional Training and the present Board on Professional Standards—and including four years as Secretary and five years as President-Elect and President.

These fifteen years of the history of the American Psychoanalytic Association (1938-1953) have been characterized by both remarkable growth and stormy evolution. Because I have been an active participant, in one role or another, in the Association's affairs through this period, and because I have discovered that comparatively few members of the Association are well informed regarding these affairs, I have felt impelled to occupy myself in this Presidential Address with communicating to the members and prospective members of the Association some information, observations, and reflections concerning the present status of organized psychoanalysis in this country. I wish to sketch for you the organizational history of the Association and to relate this historical development to the evolution of the leading problem confronting the Association over the years, that of training and its