(Dr. D'Amore is now a most welcome member of the Newsletter staff. Ed.)
The Committee on History and Archives used the Annual Meeting of the Association in California in May 1975 as an opportunity to bring old-timers together to discuss the migration of psychoanalysts to and up and down the West Coast. Dr. Douglass W. Orr served as Chairman, and also drew upon his own migration from Chicago to Topeka to Seattle, and, finally, to San Diego to report on Psychoanalytic Beginnings in Seattle and San Diego.
Dr. Ralph R. Greenson began his presentation with a humorous account of the inadequacy of five months of analysis with Wilhelm Stekel in Vienna as he began his practice in Los Angeles in 1936. In 1934 a group of analysts under the leadership of Dr. David Brunswick invited Dr. Ernst Simmel to come to Los Angeles. He arrived in 1935, becoming the first President of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Study Group. The Los Angeles and San Francisco groups began to meet together in 1940 at least once a year. The San Francisco Society was founded and recognized by the Association in 1942, with Dr. Simmel of Los Angeles as the first President, and Dr. Greenson as the first member who had received all of his formal training on the West Coast. A separate Los Angeles Society and Institute was founded in 1946.
Dr. Sigmund Gabe described highlights in the development of the Southern California Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He noted the early tensions between lay members and their European allies and students on the one hand, and the American-trained analysts on the other, over the issue of lay analysis. Other conflicts included: original settler vs. newcomer; European-trained vs. American-trained; and the Alexandrian (Dr. Franz Alexander) ideas. The deliberations of the Los Angeles Education Committee became highly politicized, an impasse was reached, and the two Southern California groups split formally in 1950. Dr. Gabe described the contributions of many colleagues to the Southern California Psychoanalytic Society and Institute which is celebrating its 25th Anniversary in 1975.
Dr. Emanuel Windholz reported on the early developments in San Francisco. Training on the West Coast was first under the auspices of Chicago, and then of Topeka. Dr. Siegfried Bernfeld, a lay analyst from Vienna, was prominent in the early history including the struggles over lay vs. medical analysis. Drs. Barrett, Berliner, Kasanin, MacFarlane, and Windholz in San Francisco formed the first West Coast society at a meeting on March 8, 1942 at Mount Zion Hospital. Dr. Kasanin made the hospital a hub for diffusing knowledge about psycho-annalysis. Erik Erikson, then in Berkeley, presented a paper on Hitler at an early meeting. In 1947 the Constitution was changed to permit lay analysts such as Dr. Bernfeld and Professor Erikson to have an active role in the Society. San Francisco sponsored training in Seattle through Dr. Orr and Dr. Edith Buxhaum.
The first member of the Association to settle in the San Diego area was Dr. James Thickstun in 1953. Dr. Orr moved there in 1965, and formal training began in San Diego in 1967. A joint committee of the two Los Angeles institutes have supervised the training in San Diego on its way to becoming a separate institute in 1974.
Dr. A. D'Amore announced that the next workshop in December, 1975 in New York will deal with the Americans who went abroad before World War II for psychoanalytic training. Dr. Sanford Gifford will chair the workshop.
The 60 participants included Dr. Bernhard Berliner, pictured below (right) with his wife. Dr. Berliner, although 90, came from San Francisco for the meeting and contributed a vignette about his arrival in San Francisco from Berlin in 1936. Also shown are Drs. Ralph R. Greenson (speaking), Douglass W. Orr, Emanuel Windholz, and Sigmund Gabe.