Various Scientific Meetings Will Emphasize Diverse Aspects of Center's Activities and Interests

The Columbia Psychoanalytic Center was founded forty years ago in a spirit of exhilaration over the boundless frontiers of inquiry in psychoanalysis. All science is in essence revolutionary and subversive of authority; no concept is ever beyond further scrutiny and newer ideas will regularly succeed older ones. As psychoanalysis enters its second century, we are struck with the renewed liveliness of debate, the rethinking and expansion of ideas, and the stimulating coexistence of multiple points of view. This has been the tradition to which Columbia has held fast since its beginnings.

In 1944 a group of the faculty of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute decided to form a new psychoanalytic society and institute devoted to teaching and to the pursuit of new knowledge in psychoanalysis in an atmosphere they felt would best serve the aims of scientific research and academic freedom. They created a psychoanalytic institute within a university, the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research, which will celebrate its fortieth anniversary during 1984-85.

The first organizational meeting for the founding of the original Association for Psychoanalytic and Psychosomatic Medicine was held at the home of Dr. David M. Levy, June 1, 1942, and was attended by Drs. Carl Binger, George E. Daniels, Max Meyers, John A.P. Millet, Bela Mittleman, M.L. Oberholzer, Maria Oberholzer, and Sandor Rado. Drs. Viola Bernard and Nathan Ackerman were accepted as associate members. While each of these persons played a significant role, the core group of founders were Rado, Daniels, Levy, Millet and, later, Abram Kardiner.

Sandor Rado was the energizing force. He was born in 1890 in Hungary and was an original member and secretary of the five-person Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association. He went to Berlin in 1922 to be analyzed by Karl Abraham, and rapidly established himself as a brilliant clinician and theorist. Freud appointed him editor of the Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse and, later, Imago. Among his analysands were Heinz Hartmann, Otto Fenichel, Rene Spitz, and George Gero. Although he later came to the conclusion that Freud had made theoretical errors in formulating his metapsychology, he was deeply devoted to Freud, could quote pages of text by heart, and believed Freud to be one of the few great geniuses in the history of mankind.

Rado's interest in education showed itself early. It was he who introduced the clinical case conference to the curriculum of the Berlin Institute. In 1931, when the New York Psychoanalytic Society decided to mold its training curriculum along the formal lines of the Berlin Institute, they invited Dr. Rado to be their Education Director. He intended to come for one year to organize their new training program, but the threat of Hitler on the horizon led him to stay over a decade. It was with great distress, and after long personal stuggle, that he and others decided that they could best serve psychoanalysis by forming a new society and institute to explore and

teach what they believed to be the newer ideas and knowledge developing in our field.

The organizers of the Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine and the separate Columbia Psychoanalytic Clinic for Training and Research were also determined to be part of the American Psychoanalytic Assocation, then still a small confederation of eight societies, without individual members. The problem was that the By-Laws of the American permitted only one society in a geographic area. An account of the strategies, tactics, thrusts and counterthrusts, major and minor battles, and expenditures of time and energy that went into the effort to include this new group within the American could be a model for an account of a major war.

Columbia owes a great debt of gratitude to several presidents of the American, particularly Drs. Karl Menninger, Leo Bartemeier, and Bertram D. Lewin, who kept the request for membership alive, obtained the By-Laws modification, and energetically steered the negotiations to a successful conclusion. In 1946, the Board on Professional Standards unanimously approved the application, and Columbia became the first university-affiliated institute of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Rado had long believed that psychoanalytic education should be integrated into graduate medical education. In his 1937 report as Educational Director of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, he stressed the need for clinical facilities and for a knowledge of the biological sciences for psychoanalytic education and research to flourish. He said, “The theories needed by the physician for the control of clinical conditions must remain close to clinical observation. And they must use the established biologic knowledge of man as their ultimate frame of reference.”

Nolan D.C. Lewis, a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons shared this view and made the University's resources available to the budding institute. Training at the new institute was modeled on a university curriculum, with daytime classes, integration into the department of psychiatry, and its own outpatient clinic, utilizing the basic science faculty of the department to teach at the Psychoanalytic Institute. A small symbol of the educational atmosphere was the decision to adopt the phrase “supervised analysis” in place of the then standard phrase “control analysis,” because of the authoritarian connotations of the term “control.”

The intellectual founders of the Columbia Center shared the views that the young science of psychodynamics was basic to psychiatry, and that its future advance depended on retaining its discourse with other sciences, biological and social, and on introducing clinical research methodology. They were convinced, as Freud had been, that psychoanalysis had a huge contribution to make to human knowledge and welfare through its impact on every aspect of modern culture and intellect, and the interdisciplinary and pluralistic setting of the university seemed the right place to carry on this effort. Psychoanalysis as a therapy was a vital core of the analytic enterprise but not the only one, and they were determined that analytic students should be aware of the larger dimensions of their discipline, in addition to mastering psychoanalytic theory and technique.

Over many years, the Center's relations within the larger academic community of the University became an important part of its identity and mission. Members of the analytic faculty have taught in many departments — comparative literature, humanities, history, anthropology, education, art history, psychology, sociology, and others, as well as at the Law School, the Union Theological Seminary, and the School of Social Work. The Center sponsored a special Program of Psychoanalytic Studies in Columbia College and interdisciplinary study groups and researches have been productive. These intimate ties with neighboring disciplines have nourished the growth of psychoanalytic thinking both within the Center and within other departments and schools of the University.

Rado had been powerfully influenced by Freud's Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, which adopted a newer view of anxiety and defense as adaptive maneuvers. It was in response to this that he formed his conception of the adaptional frame of reference, viewing all behavior as an effort of adaptation of the organism to both inner and outer stimuli. Simultaneously, he concluded that the libidinal instinctual frame of reference was no longer scientifically useful. This “battle of the frames of reference” may now seem quaint, as psychoanalysts of all persuasions recognize the productive controversies that have arisen around Freud's early instinctual models. In the forties through sixties, however, questioning Freud's earlier formulations seemed revolutionary and led to the most heated debate.

More traditional institutes tended to view Columbia as an upstart institution, not entirely reliable in its adherence to Freud. “A Methodological Study of Freudian Theory,” written by Kardiner, Karush and Ovesey in 1959, espousing what are today acknowledged points of view within mainstream psychoanalysis, (such things, for example, as a critique of the energic point of view, an argument for adaptational psychology with

its stress on object relations, and a view of agency within the person rather than the instinct) had to be published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, since it was not acceptable to the major analytic journals.

In our current, more open, scientific atmosphere it may be difficult to recall the suspicion with which new ideas were greeted not so long ago. As recently as 1970, Hans Loewald, arguing for the interpersonal and intersubjective aspects of psychoanalysis, wrote in the Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, “In many quarters there still seems to be a tendency to put up a ‘no admittance’ sign when metapsychological considerations point to object relations as being not merely regulative but essential constitutive factors in psychic structure formation.” We believe that the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center has played a role in the current renewed vitality of our scientific discussions.

During its forty years, the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center has graduated 283 psychoanalysts, who practice in all areas of the country, and include major contributors to our literature, chairmen of departments of psychiatry, basic researchers in psychoanalysis and psychiatry, and the new head of the National Institutes of Mental Health. We currently have a faculty of 173, including the new training facility at Emory under Columbia's sponsorship, and fifty students, nine of whom are beginning classes this year. The Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine now has 240 members, many of whom play an important role in the work of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

It was the hope of the founders of the institute that they could devise institutional and administrative arrangements that would foster a collegial, apolitical atmosphere in which scholarship, teaching, care of patients and research would be encouraged. In addition to assuring university standards of academic freedom and advancement, they insisted on the complete separation of the educational institution from the professional society. These have been important factors in the growth of the Center's scholarly activities, its tolerance of new or controversial points of view, and its attractiveness to analysts of repute from other geographic areas who have found a cordial home in the Center.

The Fortieth Anniversary Celebration is designed to take some of the original ideas that inspired the founding of the Center and to explore their current status. Rado's passionate concern was to keep psychoanalytic theory close to clinical psychoanalysis and a part of modern science, as it had begun to emerge in the later work of Freud and in the work of neurobiologists, physicists, and philosophers of science. He devoted a major effort, largely unsuccessful, to an attempt to operationalize the language of psychoanalysis.

David Levy was one of the first to bring the psychoanalytic point of view to direct observation of children in experimental settings, and in his experiments with chicks and puppies, he was a pioneer of modern ethology. His careful clinical research led to such now popular concepts as “maternal overprotection” and “sibling rivalry.” George Daniels was one of the founders of the study of psychosomatics and a father of consultation-liaison psychiatry. Abram Kardiner published his brilliant studies of tribal societies demonstrating the effects of culture on personality development, an important advance from the earlier task of psychoanalytic anthropology to demonstrate the universality of certain instinctual trends. All of them were interested in the object-relational and interpersonal aspects of psychoanalysis, the sources of motivation, and the place of the self. The inspiration of each of those leaders has now marked several generations of students, and their pioneering, often controversial interests are now major currents of modern psychoanalytic discourse. It seems the most fitting tribute to our educational and intellectual fathers to try to demonstrate how generative their work has been and how clearly their interests are reflected in the advanced work of the present generation of psychoanalysts.

During 1984-85 the Center will present three major scientific events, each emphasizing a different aspect of its activities and interests. Columbia's interdisciplinary spirit was celebrated in a one-day symposium on November 10, 1984 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture entitled Passionate Attachments: The Essential But Fragile Nature of Love. Experts from the fields of aesthetics, ethics, education, religion, history, and literature, as well as psychoanalysts, discussed the nature of love and the problems establishing and maintaining love relationships in contemporary life. Participants included Stanley Cavell, Richard Druss, Willard Gaylin, Carol Gilligan, Otto Kernberg, William May, Robert Michels, Judith Rossner, Lawrence Stone, and Milton Viederman.

Columbia's efforts to bring new ideas and the reevaluation of old ones regarding psychoanalytic theory and practice to a wide range of mental health professionals will be highlighted in a two-day symposium at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City on January 26 and 27, 1985 entitled The Psychology of Men: New Psychoanalytic Perspectives. The Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine

is sponsoring this event in collaboration with the Center. Many of Freud's original ideas took male psychology as a reference. In recent years, new knowledge, clinical experience, and vast social changes have led to a reworking of psychoanalytic thinking about women. A comparable critical examination of the psychology of men has suffered relative neglect. Participants will discuss a wide range of developmental, theoretical, and clinical issues, and include Stanley Coen, Arnold Cooper, Gerald Fogel, Richard Isay, Lila Kalinich, Otto Kernberg, Frederick Lane, Robert Liebert, Donald Meyers, Helen Meyers, Peter Neubauer, Ethel Person, John Munder Ross, Roy Schafer, and George Stade.

The Fortieth Anniversary Celebation will culminate in a meeting entitled Psychoanalysis: The Second Century, to be held at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City on April 27 and 28, 1985. This meeting will explore, in three major panels, the fate of some of the core ideas in the intellectual history of the Center. A panel on Culture and Psyche will examine the current status of our knowledge concerning the interpenetration of cultural pressures and the development of intrapsychic structure and conflict. A panel on Drives and Desires will explore newer ideas concerning the nature of motivational forces. A panel on Ego and Self will discuss our current thinking about psychic structure and the role of self concepts. We intend that these three panels, presented by members of the Columbia family, will mark the role of the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center in the continuing progress of psychoanalysis towards its present positions and its future scientific advances. A festive banquet will precede the serious discussion. Participants include Arnold Cooper, Aaron Karush, Otto Kernberg, Steven Marcus, Helen Meyers, Robert Michels, Lionel Ovesey, Ethel Person, Joseph Sandler, Roy Schafer, Daniel Stern, and Milton Viederman.

We look forward to sharing our celebratory year with all members of the American Psychoanalytic Association.