It is a great pleasure for me to be able to address United States colleagues through the Newsletter of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
In the time I have been President of the IPA, I have gotten to know you better and to understand your organization more fully. For example, it seems to me that you have adopted a very rigorous system to direct the functioning of your training institutes. This does not preclude that, at the same time, the A.Psa.A. constantly tries to evaluate the methods which are being applied. This aspect of the work of the A.Psa.A. is not sufficiently known by other psychoanalysts, and could be the object of study outside your Association. You have adopted original solutions to problems involved in the formation of new groups which eventually become autonomous within the Affiliated Societies of the A.Psa.A. Equally, the federationist bonds which unite your institutes could become models worthy of some thought in our societies and in the Executive Council of the I.P.A.
My impression is that the transmission and development of psychoanalysis are not without problems in your organization as in many others. To a naïve view such as mine, it seems that American psychoanalysis is perhaps in a defensive position, regardless of its roots and the often distinguished standing of those who represent it. Too easily accepted at a certain stage by your culture, psychoanalysis has perhaps been overwhelmed by those who have tried to incorporate it, not without ambivalence, as is liable to happen to any introjective movement.
The development of what is called in the United States the Behavioral Sciences seems to me to contain a risk: in a well-intentioned desire for interdisciplinary confrontation, the attempt to integrate the fundamental ideas of Psychology and Psychoanalytical Psychology on the one hand, and of Ethology and Neurophysiology on the other, run the risk of emasculating the psychoanalytic idea of the dynamic unconscious. All this, of course, leads to the spread of mongrel psychotherapies, or to behavioral therapies with respect to which psychoanalysts have to insist on their separate professional identities.
This identity of the psychoanalyst must be stressed over and above the administrative worries that may preoccupy your Association just as they do other Component Societies of the I.P.A. From the international point of view, Daniel Widlöcher, Secretary of the I.P.A., and I aim to promote a feeling of fellowship and of common perspectives regarding the identity of psychoanalysts.
The responsibilities of American psychoanalysts are heavy in this respect. They are commensurate with the particular rights and privileges you have obtained within the I.P.A. These are historically determined, as well as recognized by the Constitution of our International Association. In fact, the American Association is the only Regional Association of the I.P.A. and is entirely responsible, unlike the other Component Societies, for the setting up of new institutes, whereas any new groups being formed in a country where a Component Society exists have to accept the sponsorship of a Committee appointed by the I.P.A. Thus the A.Psa.A., which accounts for almost half of the members of the I.P.A., has special rights under our Constitution. This also is a measure of your responsibilities.
As you know, I prepare a Newsletter four times a year and I would be glad to put in concrete form the exchanges, which I hope will be many, between you and the I.P.A. by publishing any letters addressed to me together with my replies.