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Dear Sir,
Dr Aaron Esman's excellent work ‘What is “applied” in “applied” psychoanalysis?’ (Int. J. Psychoanal., 79: 741-756) incisively cuts through the prejudices against scientific approaches to applied psychoanalysis. His scholarly, well-researched study beautifully demonstrates the point that integrating ‘psychoanalytic institutes and centres into the larger world of the academy … would promote the effective teaching of psychoanalysis as a basic conceptual discipline for students in many fields’ (p. 749). But he concludes that this goal may be too difficult to attain given the current economic and intellectual climates.
An article which so skilfully challenges conventional thinking does not need to conclude with these conventional concerns, particularly since this conclusion flies in the face of fact.
At the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis we have established a Psychoanalytic Fellowship Program which includes academics and non-clinicians. The Fellowship Program is an academic honour bestowed upon appropriate applicants through our Institute. This cost-effective initiative involves the Fellows in monthly meetings with Psychoanalytic Mentors selected from our faculty, who help the Fellows apply psychoanalytic concepts to their professions. The Fellows are also invited to attend classes in our Psychotherapy Training Program and Scientific Sessions. In only four years we have attracted Professors in English, Bioethics, History, Philosophy, a District Attorney and Public Defender, primary care physicians, a sociologist, several educators, an owner and director of a highly regarded art gallery, and a respected mental health journalist.
This accomplishment has been economical and has diversified teaching and learning throughout our organisation, yielding a renewed sense of mission and morale. I agree with Dr Esman that incorporating academicians in psychoanalytic institutes, ‘remains not only worth pursuing but, perhaps, a condition for survival’ (p. 749).
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