Editorial: The Thirtieth Anniversary of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis: An Historical Appreciation

As a bystander, I remember the idealism, enthusiasm, and high aims that motivated the founders of the American Institute of Psychoanalysis in 1941. They had suffered under the rigid dogmatic restrictions of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and they felt so sure of their ability to put into effect their beliefs in freedom of ideas. It was a painful lesson to observe (and by then I was a candidate) the subsequent schisms (Eckardt, 1978) with their unpleasant interpersonal undercurrents appearing like a repetition compulsion, as if the group had learned nothing from their own previous experience. For inner and outer reasons (I spent 5 years overseas in occupied Germany and then moved to Washington, D.C.) I remained unaffiliated after graduation as an analyst. I have always been grateful for this period free of all conceptual pressures, allowing my clinical impressions to find their own expressions and organizations. Once I had gained some inner sense of reference, I began to read all theories with alertness and interest, freed from the resistance I had felt before, a resistance based on my inability to sort out with any clarity the palatable from the unpalatable. Now I was ready for some professional associations. The Washington School founded by Sullivan as a forum for a free exchange of ideas was an ideal reentry. Then I heard about the efforts to found the Academy. I was not a participant in the prefounding organizing meetings, but I became an enthusiastic charter member, fully in accord with the stated aims. I was full of gratitude and admiration for the care and genius given our constitution, which, by adhering to a few principles, promised to make possible the then