George H. Allison, M.D., Seattle, Candidate for the office of President of the American.
Dr. Elise W. Snyder: Good morning, Dr. Allison.
Dr. George H. Allison: Actually, I'm known as Mike by most of my friends in the Association.
Dr. S: Fine. And where are you from?
Dr. A: Originally from Yonkers, New York, but I'm now in Seattle.
Dr. S: Tell me about your background, where you trained, how you got to Seattle.
Dr. A: I grew up in Yonkers. I've always had an interest in music, and that—plus a scholarship—led me to the University of Rochester where the Eastman School of Music is. This was during the War, and after three years, I entered Yale Medical School where I also graduated in three years.
Dr. S: What were you interested in at Yale?
Dr. A: At that time, Fritz Redlich was a faculty member under Eugene Kahn, a very anti-analytic Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry. Redlich sneaked off to New York to get analyzed, and the name Freud was only whispered. So, of course, I was interested. Then I had a rotating internship in the Navy, and developed an important friendship with Jim Thickstun. He helped to open my eyes to Freud, and to psychoanalysis. When he went to Topeka for a residency, it influenced my decision to apply there, too. Karl Menninger had 100 of us in his class, all clamoring to be psychoanalyzed because everyone's neurotic problems were emerging. There was no way all of us could be accommodated. I had two fruitful and exciting years there with people like David Rappaport, Merton Gill and Robert Knight as my mentors. I wanted to go to Stockbridge with Knight, but I saw an opportunity in Seattle where a new training center was just getting started.
Dr. S: Did you have to travel to San Francisco for classes?
Dr. A: Not at that time. Drs. Orr and Buxbaum were in Seattle and others soon arrived. After a second stint in the Navy, in the mid-fifties, I did commute to San Francisco for a while. I graduated in 1957. I was certified and became a member of the American in 1961. In 1964, I was the first of two Seattle-bred analysts to become training analysts.
Dr. S: Those were exciting times psychoanalytically.
Dr. A: They really were. I became immersed in psychoanalytic education. I think I taught in every division of the curriculum. I chaired both the Selection Committee and the Curriculum Committee before I became the Director and Chairman of the Education Committee, from 1975 to 1978. Just at the end of my administration, the lawsuit against the Seattle Institute and various individuals was filed. The details have been in the Newsletter. The suit against some of us was dismissed very early, and then the suit against the Institute itself came to trial. Unbelievable things took place at the trial with a judge who has since been defeated for re-election. Our lawyer was really unable to explain things like transference and analytic anonymity. The plaintiff was awarded $600,000. But soon after, an appeal was filed and the case was sent back for retrial.
Dr. S: Those events sound like good training for the things that might be facing you as President.
Dr. A: I suppose so, but I was on the sidelines for the most part. It turned out okay after many further twists and turns, but it drained us.
Dr. S: In your work at your institute, what have your major interests been? When you are building a new institute, you would, I assume, have a finger in every pie.
Dr. A: That's really the way it was. I had a multiplicity of interests and activities. One thing which has been an interest is applied analysis. We've always had a rich program of visiting firefighters, lecturers, and short courses in applied analysis. Now we have the Schmidl Memorial Prize. We advertised it in the Newsletter a year ago, and 26 papers were submitted. I'm chairman of that committee and also a member of the Serota Prize Committee for papers on reconstruction, which received 22 papers this year.
Dr. S: What are your major activities at your institute at this time?
Dr. A: I still serve on the Education Committee and do training and supervisions. I teach a semester of continuous case conference each year and sometimes other courses, such as, object relations theory. Recently, I was also involved in a research project on the manifest dream which was part of a course for our research candidates. This project took the place of clinical conferences for our research candidates.
Dr. S: That's a wonderful idea, to have a research seminar for the research candidates.
Dr. A: And fascinating for me, too.
Dr. S: How is the analytic climate in Seattle? Are people happy? There's such variation around the country.
Dr. A: One of the “criticisms” that always came up at our site visits was the fact that we all get along so well with each other.
Dr. S: There is one question that I did want to ask you. I think you're in a good position to have some thoughts about it. There is some ferment as to what the relationship of Board to Council should be. You've been on both sides. I'd like to hear your thoughts about how you see that relationship.
Dr. A: I have no reservation about saying things because I'm not really running hard for office. I might even win by losing.
Dr. S: I know. It's wonderful, analysts rarely run very hard for office.
Dr. A: I believe, to begin with, that there should be a proper tension between these two bodies, not an animosity but that they both should exist and should represent different points of view (just as the societies do scientifically and the institutes do educationally). I don't think one should control the other. The thing that's unique about the American and that, in my view, is important to preserve, is the authority of the Board to monitor and consult institutes on their programs. The site visit program is a consultative one. Our standards of training are very high, and we're the envy of others because we have such high standards. I think the Board makes us unique. While I'm a Board person in the sense that many of my important experiences have been on the Board, and now I'm Secretary of the Board, nonetheless, it seems to me that recently there has been a very important revitalization of Council. I find that heartening. One extreme view would be to make the Board a committee of the Council. The other extreme would be to say that the only important thing is educational standards and the way the institutes function. While I don't think the Board is perfect, I do think it does a very fine job. We've had wonderful people, not just as Presidents of the Association, but as Chairmen of the Board. I agree there is a question about the balance of power between the two organizations. I don't find that balance way out of whack, at this point. I don't want to see the Council lose its impetus or be less active. It, and the membership-at-large should be very involved as they were about the Gaskill proposal, for example.
Dr. S: Do you have any thoughts about the relationship of the American to the Institutes of the American and its members? Any changes you would like to see?
Dr. A: It seems to me that the President should try to seek means so that the members can participate as much as possible in the work of the organization. I would particularly want to reach out to recent graduates and candidates and enhance their role in the affairs of the organization. They should play a greater part on committees and in the scientific program. It's important that people attend our meetings. There are too many graduates who do not get certified—and certification is one of the unique features of our organization. Certification may prove to have increasing value in academic hierarchies or for insurance coverage. Most of all, it is the stamp of one's passage through training. It is part of the educational process. Ultimately, 90 percent of those who apply pass. We should work to increase our role and visibility at medical centers and elsewhere so we can compete more successfully with other modalities for the best students. I also think it's important that, in our institutes, we teach and attempt to integrate the work of other schools of thought: classical, object relations, Kleinian, self psychology, etcetera. There is room in the American for diversity.
Past President Honored
Alex H. Kaplan, M.D., past President of the American was honored with the endowment of the Alex H. Kaplan Visiting Professorship in Psychoanalysis at the Department of Psychiatry, Washington School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri. He became President of the American College of Psychoanalysts in May 1987, in Chicago.
Dr. S: Are people satisfied with their practices? How's life in Seattle in terms of psychoanalytic progress?
Dr. A: Seattle is a wonderful place to live, and many people have flocked there because of its attractiveness. I think we're saturated, but then again, I hear that every place is saturated. The senior faculty have full practices, but the younger people struggle, and new people often take a long time to build up their practices.
Dr. S: Is there some sort of an outreach into the community, an active extension division?
Dr. A: During my time as Director, there was an expansion of the Board of Trustees of the Institute, which was a lay Board. There was a lot of community outreach with extension division programs of various kinds. The program we got sued over was a three-year child therapy program, and we also had a symposia for the public at large. We also tried fund raising. We were, I suppose, following the Chicago model. The lawsuit interrupted many of those activities.
Dr. S: What have your activities been with the American?
Dr. A: Since I still had a family in Yonkers, I took every opportunity to come East, and began attending meetings at the Association. Even before I was a training analyst, I frequently represented Seattle. I started out representing our society on the Council, and I've been a Fellow on the Board on and off over quite a long period of time. Perhaps
the most decisive thing I did in the Association was my six-year stint on the Committee on Institutes, where I formed really wonderful relationships with a lot of people. I visited a number of institutes, and the experience of working with institutes in turmoil was important and instructive. In a number of the places I visited, things have really changed for the better. I served on other Council committees: confidentiality, public information, and ethics, for example. I've been on the COPE Study Group on Selection, and was the COPE representative to the Board of Directors of the Fund for Psychoanalytic Research. As a result of the reading I did for that, I became (for me) sophisticated about psychoanalytic research and very enamored of its importance. I'm an old friend of Hartvig Dahl's. He trained in Seattle.
Dr. S: How do you regard the implementation of the Gaskill proposal?
Dr. A: In Seattle, the membership, as well as the Education Committee, have always looked favorably upon gifted nonmedical people being allowed training. We have tilted toward the idea of admitting people and having diverse programs. If they can't be trained as analysts, we train them along analytic therapy lines. The Davis Committee is going about its work in a very thorough fashion.
Dr. S: How would being President change how you spend your time? What's going to have to go?
Dr. A: Being President would be very demanding, particularly so since I'm in Seattle and so much of what happens in the American happens in New York.
Dr. S: Dick Simons is in Denver …
Dr. A: … which is one hour better. I know New York pretty well, and I love theatre and opera. Although when you go there, as I have recently as Secretary of the Board, you don't get to do much, and when you do, you may be too tired to enjoy it.
Dr. S: What do you think you'll cut down on?
Dr. A: I don't really know. I like to play tennis and squash and ski. A lot of that may go. I think some hours of daytime practice would also have to go in order to be in touch with New York.
Dr. S: If your son came to you five years from now and said, “I'm going to be a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst”, what would you think?
Dr. A: Ten years ago, I wasn't so enthusiastic about the future of analysis. Romy Greenson said to me, “Don't worry so. We're lucky when we're being attacked and out of favor. It's really a good time for us”. I feel more that way today than I did then. It seems to me that there's a lot of excitement—the 48 papers I just reviewed for those prizes are an indication of that. I still think it's an exciting profession. The feelings of wonder that turned me on about the unconscious and my early interest in Freud still exist.
Dr. S: Do you have some thoughts about what the relationship should be of the American Psychoanalytic to the American Psychiatric?
Dr. A: I remember saying, during my residency in Topeka, that I'd gladly give away my M.D. degree for a good education in psychology and anthropology and all the social sciences and humanities I had never studied. I envied Freud's broad education. Now, I wouldn't give away my M.D.; I'm very pleased to have a medical background. There's no reason that we can't have close ties to psychiatry as analysts and still have a liberal mixture of gifted people from other disciplines. I see the introduction of nonmedical training on a broader basis as experimental. It is something that I believe in, but I'm waiting to see how it turns out. Any major changes should occur in an evolutionary way. We must also continue to attract good medical candidates.
Dr. S: I'm very grateful to you for giving me this time from your incredibly busy schedule on such short notice.
Dr. A: Thank you.