The Fund for Psychoanalytic Research, now in its fifth year of operation, is experiencing a sense of established and stable functioning. At the same time, there is a significant rotation of Board membership. Some of the original Board of Directors have come to the end of the two three-year terms of office permissible in succession: Arnold Modell, M.D., elected from the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American; Al Solnit, M.D., elected from the Committee on Psychoanalytic Education (COPE); and Alfred Stanton, M.D., elected from the Committee on Scientific Activities, have been replaced by Drs. Edward Joseph, Martin Silverman, and Hartvig Dahl, respectively. Morton Reiser, M.D., elected a year ago from the Committee on Research and Special Training but having to resign when he became president-elect of the American, was replaced by Robert Michels, M.D.; and William Robbins, M.D., Treasurer of the American, an ex officio member of the Board of Directors, will be replaced after the May meeting in Puerto Rico by his newly elected successor as Treasurer, Judith Schachter, M.D. All in all, this is a turnover of five of the ten members of the Board of Directors.
In terms of actions, the Board came to this December meeting with $50,555 of carry-over funds, which included $9,150 raised by two of its local committees engaged in nationwide fund raising efforts directed towards donors outside our membership ranks, Chicago and New York. There were nine grant applications considered at this meeting, with total requests for $88,568 or an average of $9,841. This was the largest number of grant requests to have come for consideration at the semi-annual Board of Directors meeting and it reflects a steadily rising application rate. However, only one was approved this time, $5,700 awarded to Saul Siegel, M.D., Director of Research at Michael Reese Hospital, for the study of transference-countertransference role relatedness, part of a much larger and very comprehensive psychotherapy research program attempting to explore empirically some notions about such relatedness advanced in a series of papers by Sandler. This approval rate (one of nine) is in sharp contrast to what has been about a 60% overall approval rate up to the present.
In addition to the one approved application, the Board of Directors expects to be able to award next May second year support to three projects approved last May for two years: 1) Hartvig Dahl, M.D., $7,500 for continuation of two previously funded projects, one on the delineation of analyst's countertransferences from the syntactics of their (tape-recorded) interventions, and one on the clinical inference process in psychoanalysis; 2) Stuart Hauser, M.D., $3,130 for longitudinal studies (by interview and psychological testing) of ego development and ego defenses in early adolescence with three groups (a normal, a psychiatrically ill, a somatically ill); and 3) Jeff Masson, Ph.D., $9,000 for bringing to publication the Freud-Fliess correspondence at full length and in a new translation, a work for which he has Anna Freud's full cooperation. This makes for a total of $25,330 of potentially encumbered funds, or $25,225 of remainder funds, in addition to whatever may be generated by the member assessments and outsider contributions in 1981, to accommodate prospective awards in the May 1981 meeting in Puerto Rico and in the December 1981 meeting in New York.
In presenting his report to the Executive Council last December, Dr. Robert Wallerstein, the Board's chairman, commented on the long-range future of the Fund and its search for financial stability
as follows: “A year ago, we were facing an imminent disaster situation—the Fund income, derived wholly from the voluntary $35 dues assessments contributed by about two thirds of our members, was relatively fixed and we were trying to cope with a steadily rising volume of applications. It seemed as if we were about at the point where for the first time since the inception of the Fund, we would not be able to fully fund all the approved grants even at the very low ceilings of no more than $12,000 per grant year under which we have been operating… This past year, out of the combination of a much lower than heretofore approval rate on grant applications and the beginning of the vital outside fund raising, the financial crisis facing the Fund has been held off and we have some very necessary breathing space. However, the future prospect is unaltered, unless a major boost in annual revenues to the Fund is to be effected soon.”
Because of the recent significant increases in the dues of the American, the Fund for Psychoanalytic Research is not asking for an increase in the basic assessment of $35 this year, but it does hope that the number of members paying the assessment will rise significantly and, of course, it does welcome the higher contributions made by some members, as high as $100 in some instances.
The Fund is also expanding more aggressively its endeavors amongst potential friends and supporters of psychoanalytic research in the corporate, business, Foundation, and private philanthropic world. This was always the intent, but it was first necessary to demonstrate over the initial few years of its operation that the members of the Association themselves supported the Fund for Psychoanalytic Research and would continue to do so. The outside fund raising effort has been organized to this point by Dr. George Klumpner of Chicago, and local fund raising committees consisting of interested analysts and friends have already been organized in about 15 psychoanalytic centers. As already mentioned, those in Chicago and New York have raised initial sums of money. To assure maximum success, plans are being worked out to have the entire fund raising program be taken over by the American Psychoanalytic Association under the direct management of the Executive Committee of the organization. In the meantime, it is hoped that each member of the American will make at least the $35 requested assessment on the dues statement for 1981.