Introduction

In today's world Freudian psychoanalysis has come under serious question both in regard to its therapeutic usefulness and its validity

as a theory of human psychology. Its value is questioned even as the numbers who practice its tenets and the numbers who benefit from them both increase. There is great pressure from a society in which “quicker and cheaper” supplant “careful and long lasting.” There is pressure to match from the mental health community. Within our own psychoanalytic community, the pressures seem no less. The currently proliferating schools of thought provide for some a wealth of possibility, but for many others, a sense of confusion about which path to follow.

We are coming to the end of our first century. The New York Freudian Society has a continuing intent to examine our intellectual base as it relates to our clinical work. We state in our Bulletin the following:

The New York Freudian Society and Psychoanalytic Training Institute was founded in 1959 to provide training and a collegial community for psychoanalysts from many disciplines. Since 1993, the Society has been a Component Society of the International Psychoanalytical Association. Its purposes are two-fold: first, to offer those who are qualified an opportunity to belong to, and participate in, an active institutional structure, and second, to offer those who are qualified the opportunity for psychoanalytic study. The Institute, sponsored by the Society, offers a full course of training in adult, child, and adolescent psychoanalysis.

Committed to the basic principles of Freud's profound discoveries, we identify ourselves in an historical context that began with that revolution in the understanding of the human mind and that continues in a creative and productive evolution. We are working together to contribute to that evolution by our participation in the psychoanalytic movement, responsive to the