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TALKING TO YOU ABOUT THE BIRTH OF THE COMMITTEE on Psychoanalytic Education is a pleasure—not because it takes me back over a span of 20 years, but because so much has happened in that time. Many changes have taken place among ourselves and in the world in which we live, as analysts and as members of an analytic association. It is now time to review the events that brought COPE into being, to assess its activities in relation to its original aims, and to consider the direction we want to take in the future. It is not only to the present generation of psychoanalytic educators that I speak today, but to all the members of the Association from whose ranks the educators of the future will come. Theirs will be the responsibility for insuring the quality of our scientific growth by providing for increasing excellence in our educational programs.
To introduce what I have to say, let me offer you two texts that will better define my purpose today and my hopes for the future. The first is a remark by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, (Gregg, 1957, p. 1), "A page of history is worth a volume of logic." We need to find out what our history can teach us. The second is from Gregg himself, who describes the purpose of a professional association such as ours when he says, "What binds men together in effective association [italics mine] are three things: shared experiences, beliefs generally agreed upon, and hopes for the future held in common" (Gregg, 1957, p. 16). I want to look back on the educational responsibilities confronting the American Psychoanalytic Association in its early history, on how those responsibilities were