A former president of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (BPSI) writes a memoir of his presidency. The organizational history contains personal recollections and collective responses to the several-fold crisis he inherited. The 4-year period of his presidency involved the sale of an heirloom building, the purchase of a new one, the democratic creation of a multi-level new mission statement, the management of a liquid endowment, and the design of new organizational by-laws. These efforts enabled the subsequent twenty years to be a creative and adaptive realization of the mission’s stated goals. Stages of conflict are described, and retrospective and experiential learning are provided in the hope that many of the lessons of this transformational process may be useful to other psychoanalytic and therapeutic institutes as they contend with their own change processes.