The relationships between organized psychology and psychoanalysis in the United States have a long and ambivalent history. Despite the interest of a few influential psychologists, psychoanalysis has never been the dominant orientation of American psychology, which has been consistently behavioristic and deeply suspicious of “mind.” In contrast, American psychiatry, particularly in the post-World War II years, became heavily identified with psychoanalysis, and most important chairs of departments of psychiatry were filled by analysts or sympathizers.
The American Psychological Association with close to 30,000 members is the dominant organization of psychologists. It began as, and to a considerable extent still is, the organization of academic psychologists with a strong orientation toward research. With the growth of clinical psychology, now the largest group within the Association, the tensions between “academic-scientific” and “clinical-professional” psychology have grown acute. The increasing professionalization of psychology — including school, industrial, and counseling, in addition to clinical — has threatened to split the organization. The Association now includes 42 divisions, and of these the 39th is the Division of Psychoanalysis. Formed in 1979, the Division now has well over 1,300 members.
The forerunner of Division 39 was a much less formal organization, known as PISP (Psychologists Interested in the Study of Psychoanalysis), which for many years led a largely unadvertised and nonpolitical existence but provided for its 200-300 members the most erudite clinical presentations at the annual meetings. Indeed, it still holds its meetings separately from Division 39, which in contrast has behind it great organizational push and skill. Clearly the Division appeals to many psychologists who feel identified with psychoanalysis but have no organizational home.
Among the aspirations of Division 39 are a journal and a competence-certifying system with all of the infrastructure such an effort requires, such as a definition of the practice of psychoanalysis, qualifications for would-be practitioners, standards for training, standards for the accreditation of training institutes, a code of ethics, and a protocol for peer review of practice. This fundamentally quite difficult set of tasks is further complicated by the fact that, according to the bylaws of the American Psychological Association, a Division is an interest group and may not be a certifying body. It may not even publish a journal without approval of the Association. The Division now publishes a newsletter, The Psychologist Psychoanalyst.
Certification of competence to practice psychoanalysis by a national accrediting body is deeply desired by members of Division 39, as it is by members of the American. While there is some sentiment toward setting up a separate (captive) certifying body along the lines of the certifying procedure of the American Psychoanalytic Association, there is greater sentiment for inviting certification through the American Board of Professional Psychology, an independent certifying group set up by the American Psychological Association analogous to the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. This Board now certifies practitioners in school, industrial, counseling, and clinical psychology, and its diplomas are widely recognized.
A further complication in the efforts to develop professional, qualifying, and educational standards is that when the Division was organized, many persons enrolled who did not regard themselves as analysts but were merely “interested” in psychoanalysis. To further the numerous professional aims, a Section of Psychoanalytic Proctitioners has been established within the Division with its own Board of Directors. This Section now has 90 members who meet its special membership qualifications. Its organizers hope it will be sufficiently homogeneous in outlook and background to permit setting standards for practice and training.
A complication within this last complication is the great diversity even among the practitioners of psychoanalysis. Unlike the members of the American who were trained largely in institutes that profess a Freudian orientation, psychologist-psychoanalysts are far more various in training and outlook. Some are largely self-trained through reading and private supervision, not uncommonly offered by sympathetic members of the American. Others have obtained their training in organized institutes representing a variety of points of view from “orthodox Freudian” through the full range of “neo-Freudian” points of view.
As might be expected, this diversity has complicated discussions of the definition of psychoanalysis, appropriate training standards, and standards for peer review. It has also raised the specter in some that control of the organization might be seized by “them.” In short, all of the vicissitudes that delight the sociologists of organizations are occurring in their expected order.
In its brief existence, despite the many internal and external obstacles, the organization has some major accomplishments to show. Not the least has been its ability to organize itself and to achieve a considerable degree of coherence, in spite of the potential divisiveness stemming from different psychoanalytic orientations. The Division has adopted a set of standards for peer review, after long debate and with the permission of the Peer Review Committee of the American Psychoanalytic Association, that is a somewhat revised version of the peer review standards developed by this Association. Committees are engaged now in cataloguing training opportunities for psychologists in psychoanalysis, a necessary preliminary to setting standards for training and for approving institutions.
The Division is also seeking
recognition of its place in the psychoanalytic movement. An aspiration of some is independent recognition by the International Psycho-Analytical Association, a hope complicated by the special position that the American Psychoanalytic Association has as a “regional association” within the IPA.
The Division's aspirations include doing for its members and for psychoanalysis what has not been done before. Psychologist-psychoanalysts in this country feel excluded from the mainstream of organized psychoanalysis in ways that their colleagues abroad are not. For many of its members, the American Psychoanalytic Association and the Academy of Psychoanalysis represent the “establishment” of medical psychoanalysis from which they are excluded and to which they would belong if they could. Others, of course, would have none of that and insist on their separate indentity, fearful of being absorbed and losing their distinctiveness.
Little question exists now that in the very near future Division 39 will be able to speak for a large number of psychologist-psychoanalysts, variously trained and with a range of viewpoints about psychoanalysis, who have not had a spokesman before. It very likely will be a political force of some magnitude.
Herbert J. Schlesinger, Ph.D.
Denver