The heightening of tensions in the nuclear arms race between the United States and the U.S.S.R. has prompted the Association to speak out on international affairs for the second time in recent years and only the third time in its history.
When the deployment of Pershing II and Cruise missiles in Europe seemed imminent last October, Henri and Rachel Parens wrote to President Morton Reiser suggesting that the Association consider sending a letter to President Reagan and all Members of Congress on the enormous psychological consequences of the escalation of the nuclear arms race. They voiced further concern to Dr. Reiser when the actual deployment occurred at the end of November.
At the December meetings, the issue was raised before the Council, which empowered the Executive Committee to bring it before the Meeting of Members. Margaret Brenman-Gibson gave a rousing speech in support of such a letter. At the invitation of President Reiser, Dr. Brenman-Gibson and the Parenses wrote several drafts, one of which Dr. Parens presented at the meeting. Drs. Brenman-Gibson, John Mack, Martin Wangh, and Wolfgang Weigert, among others, spoke strongly in favor of the letter.
The members voted unanimously to send such a letter and charged the Council to take the necessary steps for implementation. The Executive Committee was empowered to approve revisions of the letter without requiring a new vote of the members, in order to facilitate quick action. President Reiser qualified only that the proposed letter would have to pass certain legalistic hurdles. He asked that any suggestions for revising the text be sent to him.
At its meeting on March 4, the Executive Committee considered the draft which the Parenses had proposed, as well as a dozen or so alternate ones proposed by others. The committee decided to send a shortened version of the Parens letter, retaining most of the opening and closing paragraphs, but eliminating a middle one which had attempted to describe in greater detail the malignant nature of the arms race on psychological development, particularly of children and adolescents, and the consequences of such severe psychological tension as reflected in the international political arena.
The committee also decided to send the letter to the President and copies only to the Vice-President and the Speaker of the House, rather than individually to every Member of Congress. Legal counsel advised of the necessity to avoid a stance which had the appearance of lobbying, which could endanger our tax-exempt status.
The proposed statement represents only one effort among those of other analysts who have been active in attempting to bring about a lessening of the world's tensions in this nuclear age and in studying the psychological effects of such tensions. Among analysts who are active in these areas are Drs. Mack, Wangh and Brenman-Gibson, and also James Titchener and Robert Wallerstein.
In March 1982, under the presidency of Arnold Cooper, the Association sent a long letter with similar emphasis “… for responsible citizens to devote themselves anew to the reduction of nuclear arms and the ultimate abolition of the threat of nuclear war” to the President and the Members of Congress. A key sentence in that letter was: “While no reasonable person would knowingly take actions which would risk human destruction, the consequences of nuclear war have a dimension of horror which induces automatic psychological mechanisms of defense which tend to lead us away from fears which exceed our capacity to cope.”
The first and only other time that the Association spoke out on an international issue was in 1970, when a telegram was sent to the President of the United States and congressional leaders protesting the extension of the Vietnam War into Cambodia.