The Lawsuit Revisited

On March 1, 1985, an event occurred that changed the American Psychoanalytic Association forever. Four psychologist plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the American for presumably monopolizing high quality psychoanalytic training in this country and thereby being in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Three other organizations were named as codefendants: the International Psychoanalytical Association, the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. This was a civil action suit on behalf of the four plaintiffs, as well as a class action suit on behalf of several thousand psychoanalytic psychologists. The suit was being financed by the Group for the Advancement of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in Psychology (GAPPP), an organization formed in 1984 specifically for the purpose of raising money for the lawsuit. Its steering committee consisted of three members of the Division of Psychoanalysis (Division 39) of the American Psychological Association: Ernest S. Lawrence (then president of Division 39), Nathan N. Stockhamer (then chair of the Qualifications Committee of Division 39), and Bryant L. Welch (then co-chair of the Professional Issues Committee of Division 39).

In his monumental Lay Analysis: Life inside the Controversy, Robert S. Wallerstein (1998) has written a comprehensive and detailed study of the history of lay analysis in Europe and in this country, the events leading up to the lawsuit, the negotiations and final settlement in October 1988, the struggles over implementation of the settlement agreement, and the meaning of the entire controversy—namely, the establishment of the identity of psychoanalysis as a distinct discipline, separate from but certainly interfacing with medicine, psychiatry, psychology, all of the sciences (biological, behavioral, and social), and all of the humanities. No one was better qualified than Wallerstein to