Alex H. Kaplan, the new President, first became seriously interested in psychoanalysis during his psychiatric residency at the Grasslands Hospital in the late 30's. A senior resident there, Dr. Joseph Lander, was in psychoanalytic training, and the social workers had been trained at the New York School of Social Work. Dr. Kaplan attended the regular conferences of the social work group at Grasslands, and found a way of approaching and understanding patients which was in stimulating contrast to much of the teaching then available to psychiatric residents. He began his own training at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, but World War II intervened. When the war was over, he decided to establish himself in St. Louis, where he had attended medical school, and to continue his training at the Chicago Institute. He was one of the early group of candidates in St. Louis, and has participated actively from the very beginning in the psychoanalytic organizations there, the Psychoanalytic Foundation, the Society, and the Institute. But he has always remained an active teacher and consultant to social work, hospital, and psychiatric training programs and clinics.

It would be natural, then, for Alex Kaplan to have given particular attention to the world outside of psychoanalysis, to social, economic and political factors affecting our profession. He sees, however, a serious danger in overemphasis on these matters, feeling that our most important concern must always be to the quality of our clinical work and to the support and conduct of research. Research should enlighten our practice and integrate our clinical understanding with developments in related fields, he says, and he has little fondness for what he characterizes as over-theorizing.