Throughout his prolific analytic career, Dr. Robert Wallerstein has been prominently identified with psychoanalytic research. As a result of his efforts, the Fund for Psychoanalytic Research was established in December, 1975. In its five years of existence the Fund has awarded $228,935 in 26 grant awards. Dr. Wallerstein, who gave the following interview, was the first Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Fund, and last December, shortly before his retirement from that Board, he gave his final report to the Executive Council.
Newsletter: Can you describe the scope and range of the research which has been funded?
Wallerstein: The funded research has not always been about the psychoanalytic process, though a fair number of projects were. The research data could come from sources other than psychoanalytic, as long as psychoanalytic ideas were being investigated. Data could come from infant/child developmental observation, from a psychosomatic setting, and from literature and history. The funded research has varied from an investigation of the history of psychoanalysis in Spain to creating psychoanalytic indices which investigate the broad sweep of the psychoanalytic process, and to the most detailed moment-to-moment research of interactional analysis, using tape recordings and computer assistance.
Grants are not limited to just members of the American. You don't have to be in the United States; you don't have to be a psychoanalyst. As long as you are doing something that psychoanalysts can learn from, the grant is fundable.
Newsletter: The average amount distributed has only been $6,937, ranging from a low of $ 1,500 to a high of the maximum of $12,000. In these inflated times, what is the value of such small awards?
Wallerstein: What the small awards can do is enable people to develop beginning ideas to the point where they can go and get bigger funding. Several of our grantees have been able to use the seed money we've given them for the secretarial and research help, for computer help or for whatever, enabling them to put together a more substantial proposal which NIMH or others have subsequently funded on a much larger scale. One way the fund is not used is to support the analyst carrying out the research. They are expected to put in their own time. In that manner, a little bit of money can go a long way.
Newsletter: How do you view the future prospects of the Fund?
Wallerstein: I think they link completely to its capacity to transcend its current level of operation. At its current level, it may face a future of slow strangulation. The demand on the Fund is increasing because, as it has become more widely known, more people are applying. We've been running an approval rate of between 50% and 60%. With more applications, we may be approving many, but funding few. Up to now, we haven't been in that position.
Newsletter: Is there some hope of raising sizeable amounts of money from philanthropic, corporate, and foundation sources?
Wallerstein: The American has put together a committee, chaired by Bernard Pacella, who know and have access to people and institutions who have a known interest in psychoanalysis. There's a lot riding on this new committee's capacity to translate this knowledge into action to generate substantial funds, up to a quarter of a million dollars a year.
Newsletter: If the Fund is going after big money, why assess the membership?
Wallerstein: One of the things outside donors ask is, “Are you people supporting it yourselves? And if you're not, why should I?” We've had one donor say, “Well, you give $35.00 apiece, I'll give $35.00.” He's a man who could have given several thousand. The more we are substantially supporting it, the more we have a basis for appealing to the outsider.
Newsletter: Beyond their personal contributions, are there ways in which interested analysts can promote the Fund?
Wallerstein: Make the Fund more widely known. Encourage psychoanalytic researchers in their own region to look to the Fund to finance their work. They can help Pacella and his committee with names and contacts of people in their communities who they have reason to think might be sympathetic to psychoanalytic research funded by a board of directors that disburses the money carefully and according to rigorous critera.
Newsletter: As you retrospectively review your tenure on the Fund, what do you view as its accomplishments, and what do you view prospectively as its challenges?
Wallerstein: The accomplishments are that it exists, that it's been going five years, that it has annually brought in money, and that people have applied and reapplied to it. Some who were turned down have, in response to the criticism, reshaped their proposals and were funded. There is some significant body of research out there that's been done with the help of the Fund. When George Engel, who has been following Monica and her family for 30 years, ran into some tight funding, our Fund enabled him to keep his central team, a research assistant and a secretary, together over a year until other funding became available.
The challenge for the Fund is that it really has to take a quantum leap from its current stable level to another kind of level. The Fund is well established, in that it's no longer being guided by those who brought it into being. It has a life of its own with a vigorous Board of Directors, chaired by Ed Joseph. It is a going, thriving, yet modestly thriving, enterprise.