You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Responding to These Questions is Essentially Writing a Report from the trenches. It behooves me, therefore, to describe those trenches and their surround so that the reader can contextualize my reactions. I am one of five founders of a contemporary institute called the Northwest Center for Psychoanalysis (NCP) based in Seattle, Washington. Our institute opened its doors to candidates for the first time in 1995. Within its first five years, 20 candidates began training, 16 of them female and 4 male. Of that original group, eight graduated rather quickly, while six dropped out of the program. NCP started out with one site in Seattle proper where most of our classes were held, and another in Portland, Oregon. (Each site has since evolved to become free standing while still connected in spirit.) The original Executive Committee comprised two female analysts in Seattle (including myself as Associate Director) and two male analysts in Portland. Our institute took root in a region that historically had had less of a psychoanalytic Zeitgeist than have many other parts of the country. As a result, we felt something like psychoanalytic pioneers joining the other hardy souls—notably the Seattle Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study—who had already been trying to farm in hardscrabble Northwestern territory. Although these two groups had had much success, we wondered if the region could support another effort. Were we being brave or foolhardy?
NCP was designed as an independent institute, encouraged, and modestly supported by Division 39 of the American Psychological Association, but not formally authorized by anyone but ourselves and