At the Board meeting of April 30, 1975, a group of analysts from Boston applied for and was granted provisional status for The Psychoanalytic Institute of New England-East (P.I.N.E.). This division of the Boston Society and Institute (B.P.S.I.) has a long history which was reviewed by Dr. Homer Curtis of the Committee on New Training Facilities. At the time of the site visit of the Committee on Institutes in February 1974, there was evidence of conflict between some who demanded more “democratization” in the B.P.S.I., and some who saw the changes that would result as threats to training standards. Attempts to mediate between the two groups at the request of many officers of the B.P.S.I. included the work of an Ad Hoc Committee headed by Dr. James McLaughlin which visited Boston for three days in January 1975. This Committee's report concluded, in part, that it saw more potential for the health of psychoanalysis in Boston if two institutes “different yet excellent can eventuate as against the probably corrosive consequences of an attempted forced unity.”
The B.P.S.I. analysts disagreed with the consultant committee's assessment, fearing destructive local consequences and dreading the possible precedent-setting consequences nationally which might encourage a group of disaffected analysts to try to found new institutes. The New Training Facilities Committee studied all available reports and consulted widely with representatives from both P.I.N.E. and B.P.S.I. For both groups to work together toward disengagement seemed to be best for the welfare of analysts, candidates, and the position of psychoanalysis in Boston. The Committee felt that the P.I.N.E. group fulfilled essential criteria to qualify as a provisional institute. It also felt that B.P.S.I. could develop excellent new faculty members, and that both groups intended, and were capable of, fulfilling their present educational obligations.
A discussion of the issues continued for many hours at the Board meeting in Los Angeles. The report on this discussion by the Secretary of the Board, Dr. Leonard Shengold, was praised by all sides for fairness, thoroughness and evidence of compassionate understanding. In this brief Newsletter article, only the conclusion can be given: It seemed more and more that the central problem was one of personal differences, and that these differences were irreconcilable. After the vote to admit P.I.N.E. to Provisional Institute status, the P.I.N.E. representatives were invited to sit at the Board.
The Board then voted approval of ten training analysts from B.P.S.I. who would now be working in P.I.N.E.