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IDENTIFICATION OF AN "AMERICAN SCHOOL" marks a shift both in the geographical and in the theoretical orientation of psychoanalysis (Wolstein, 1977), (1985). The convergence of European and American thought in the United States between the late 1920's and the 1950's enriched psychoanalysis with sociocultural and ego-interpersonal considerations unexplored in classical psychoanalytic inquiry (Fromm-Reichmann, 1959) ; (Held-Weiss, 1985); (Thompson, 1984). Today, shared sociocultural orientations may unite American clinicians more closely than metapsychological positions differentiate among them (Levenson, 1972).
The American School merits consideration apart from geography and sociology. The term underscores a pluralistic orientation grounded in American psychological soil, both receptive to European psychoanalytic thought and nurturant of continued growth in the American grain.
The first systematic formulation of American psychology dates to 1890, with William James's publication of The Principles of Psychology. James's psychology of consciousness synthesizes observational and experiential processes both as the subject and structure of psychological inquiry. The dialectic of Jamesian psychology encompasses consciousness both as a unitary phenomenon and as reflexive attention to specific aspects of the whole phenomenon.
The synthesis and breadth of focus reflected in James's thinking, his pluralistic characterization of psychological process as integrating social and individual experience, observer and observed, object and relation, has not been recognized explicitly