The Lawsuit and Democratic Procedures

April 12, 2004. Recent articles by Robert Wallerstein and Richard Simons in JAPA (51/Supplement) and the publication in 1998 of Wallerstein's Lay Analysis: Life Inside the Controversy prompt me to add a note to the discussions of “the lawsuit” and the opening of training to nonphysicians by the institutes of the American. I was president of the American from 1980 to 1982, a time when the issue of nonmedical training regularly came before the Council, the Board, and the Executive Committee. The proposals that were put forward then were confined to accepting individuals for training in the institutes, without an accompanying resolution that after graduation they would be eligible for membership in the American on the same basis as physician graduates. It was my position that the training of nonphysicians as psychoanalysts was itself desirable (the entire history of psychoanalysis had demonstrated that medical training was not a prerequisite for excellence as a psychoanalytic clinician or theoretician), but if it was to occur at institutes of the American it had to be linked to a change in membership criteria, eliminating the requirement of a medical degree. This would require a bylaws change by a vote of the membership.

My urging that opening training must be linked to opening membership regularly produced demur within Council and Board and led to the seemingly endless appointment of study groups to weigh the problem. The necessary bylaws amendment to change our membership requirement was not put forward (probably out of concern that it would be defeated). Instead, the Gaskill proposal, which spoke only to the training issue and not to the membership issue, was passed. A few years later the gross injustice of graduating people who could not have the same access to membership as physicians became apparent, and we then of course amended our bylaws to accept nonmedical graduates.

I believe this important issue has been scanted in our history, and it has appeared as if some