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In Unfree Associations: Inside Psychoanalytic Institutes, author Douglas Kirsner gives a penetrating look at psychoanalytic institutes and how their development, structure, and operations have conflicted with the advancement of psychoanalytic theory and practice. I strongly recommend this book to all who are connected with the psychoanalytic enterprise, as well as to students of group behavior and institutions that are compromised by dynamics of power.
Kirsner, a philosopher from Australia who is interested in psychoanalysis, has written and taught about psychoanalytic institutes for several decades. His current work describes the history of conflicts at four important institutes: (1) the New York Psychoanalytic Institute; (2 the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and its split with the birth of PINE; (3) the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute; and (4) the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute. A concluding chapter summarizes his findings, making recommendations for structural changes that might lessen future conflicts within institutes.
I had a strong emotional reaction reading these narratives. As a training analyst at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute — I was trained as a candidate between 1965 and 1973 and appointed (the author uses the word “anointed”) training analyst in 1979 — I personally know many of the analysts described in these accounts. Although I have been aware of institutional struggles throughout my psychoanalytic career, reading the author's description of events still came as a shock, somewhat like discovering scandalous behavior in one's own family. As I read through the book, I found myself defensively reasoning that because the author is not an analyst, he really doesn't have an “inside” perspective of institutes’ struggles. He must be misperceiving and exaggerating their conflicted history. After further