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THE DECISION to present to you at this time an interim report on the state of some of our affairs and my views on certain of the problems with which we are now confronted had a two-stage period of development.
The first of these took place a month or two ago, when I was asked, as President of The American Psychoanalytic Association, to give such an address at the Annual Meeting of the West Coast Psychoanalytic Societies held in Los Angeles in mid-October. Since this was somewhat in the nature of a celebration for having this high office held by one of them, and things being relatively calm out there at that moment, the stress of my presentation then was on how this fact symbolized the geographic growth of psychoanalysis, which had its parallels psychologically, scientifically, and administratively. Yet I was led even at that time to considerations concerning our present status and particularly to viewing some of our most pressing current problems.
This might have finished it, except for the circumstance that in the meantime another situation within our organizational midst kept pressing with growing intensity and with an increasing crescendo, as well as with certain attendant phenomena which soon made it apparent that more was necessary, and was indeed ripe for the saying. I am referring to the current "issue" to which this Administration has been heir, and of the ramifications of which we are now in the midst, namely, the changes necessitated within