From the Editor: Our First Century

This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the American Psychoanalytic Association. JAPA, the association's scholarly journal, founded in 1953, is joining in celebrating this milestone in the organization's history by publishing, in the 2011 volume, two series of celebratory articles. The first consists of articles examining contributions of American psychoanalysis that particularly reflect our national, cultural, and intellectual context. Second, I have commissioned from each of the four living JAPA editors, past and present, a piece addressing our experiences during the decade of our tenure.

Organizing the first series required difficult choices, given the breadth and depth of subjects and perspectives engaged in by American psychoanalysts during the hundred-year history of our organization. I have aimed to highlight representative themes rather than for comprehensiveness, in each instance looking for lines of clinical and/or theoretical inquiry that reflect characteristically “American” perspectives and interests. The first of these articles comes from John Kafka. Appearing in this issue, it considers the role played by “psychoanalytic” hospitals in the development of American psychoanalysis. These institutions served as training and intellectual centers focused on understanding primitive mental functioning, manifest in psychotic illness but seen also in borderline and other severe psychopathology. Chestnut Lodge, Austen Riggs, Sheppard Pratt, the Menninger Clinic, and several other institutions should not be underestimated as generative centers for psychoanalytic thought, practice, and education. It is a theme touched on again in Arnold Richards's piece on his years as editor of JAPA; he was profoundly influenced by his training at one such institution.

The other articles will appear later in the year. Lawrence Friedman addresses the work of Charles Brenner, a quintessentially American psychoanalyst. Brenner's theorizing, particularly toward the end of his caree