Dr. Elise W. Snyder: This is a lovely setting. Thank you for giving me some of your vacation time. Fred, what is your title at Einstein?
Dr. Fred Pine: I am a psychologist and a professor in the Department of Psychiatry. My official title is “Head of Programs in Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.” I have an overview responsibility for that area in the Residency Training Program.
Dr. S: So you are in charge of all the supervision and the seminars, etcetera?
Dr. P: I think it is wiser to put it as I do … that I have an overview responsibility for them. Because there are lots of people in charge, I wouldn't want to claim “in chargeness.” But when there is a problem in the area, the Chairman comes to me.
Dr. S.: How long have you been at Einstein?
Dr. P.: Exactly 20 years… I came in 1968, in the fall.
Dr. S.: Why don't we work forwards, starting with college… what did you major in?
Catherine Kanner, Illustrator
Dr. P.: For the first semester, business… and my accounting teacher told me I had the makings of a first-class CPA.
Dr. S: I love it!
Dr. P: And he was probably right!
Dr. S: Where were you at college then?
Dr. P: I was at Syracuse University. I had no guidance in going through my education. I applied only to Syracuse and Yale, and I told Yale that they were my second choice. After that first semester, I switched to City College, and became a psychology major.
Dr. S: Those were the really great days at City College.
Dr. P: Yes, it was producing more future Ph.D.s than any other college in the country. There was a moment in my senior year when I almost became a biology major with the intention, not of going into medicine, but of doing research in biology. I worked out with Columbia University Graduate School what courses I would have to switch. After my first chemistry class, in which the instructor pointed to the Periodic Table and said that if we memorize that and don't ask questions, we'll do well in the course, I went and switched my major back to psychology. I was a biology major for exactly one day.
Dr. S: Did you know that I became a biology major as an upper junior at the urging of one of my professors? He was a psychologist-psychoanalyst, trained at an institute of the American in the late forties, who said that if I intended to be an analyst, I certainly shouldn't do it the way he did.
Dr. P: I'm not sure I'd say the same.
Dr. S: Well, I've liked the other route ... I really enjoyed medical school.
Dr. P: Anyway, I was a psychology major in a very strong department of psychology. Gardner Murphy was the Chairman. We thought of him as the most important psychologist in America. I don't know where we got our ratings from, but that was the local view. He was a very fine and stimulating man and teacher. The course that caught my fancy most, however, was in experimental psychology. Every week we did a piece of research on very dull topics, like reaction time and things like that. I loved the process of figuring out the meanings of the data, developing hypotheses, and writing it up. Years later, it seemed quite natural when I found myself doing research, because that was part of my initial intention in going into the field.
Dr. S: You hadn't planned to be a therapist?
Dr. P: Neither yes nor no. The history of my interest in psychoanalysis goes way back. I grew up in a family where psychoanalysis was not foreign. My father had consulted with A.A. Brill. Then, in the late 1920's, he went into analysis with Philip Lehrman. Lehrman was one of the early Presidents of the New York Psychoanalytic Society. Also, my sister had been in analysis during my teens, and I had had a consultation with someone once.
Dr. S: When you told Yale that Syracuse was your first choice?
Dr. P: That would have been wise. But actually, when I was at City. So, being a therapist, being an analyst, was certainly part of my thinking. I remember reading Freud on my own in college, as many people do at that age, and being fascinated by it. But all the way through graduate school, in my thoughts about the future, I never made a distinction between writing, doing research, teaching, and doing clinical work. I never saw practice and analysis as the be-all and end-all. I don't know whether something in the Harvard atmosphere, [I was in the Department of Social Relations] fostered that attitude. I had the wonderful opportunity of studying with many senior figures in the fields that were represented in that department — Gordon Allport in social psychology, Talcott Parsons in sociology, Clyde Kluckholn in anthropology, Henry Murray and Robert White in clinical psychology. All of these people were teachers and writers and thinkers. In a significant way they became a sort of group ego ideal; they set a course that I was happy to follow. When I came back to New York City after graduate school, I got the impression of people clearly heading towards clinical work. It was only then that I became aware of this sort of sharp distinction, this sense of a choice to be made. In my Harvard years, and truly my whole professional career, I have never felt there was a choice to be made. I still don't. I mean I know the difference when I am writing a paper and when I am working with a patient, but it all comfortably feels like part, not only of one life, but of one set of intertwined activities.
Dr. S: What was your doctoral research on?
Dr. P: I worked with Daniel Levinson, more recently known for his book, “The Seasons of a Man's Life,” about adult development. Earlier he had done work on the authoritarian personality. He applied related kinds of thinking to studies of, for example, mental hospitals. I worked with him for three years, based at what was then Boston Psychopathic Hospital, and now the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, doing research on hospital personnel. My thesis was a study of belief systems of psychiatric aides. Earlier, I had done an observational study of patienthood. I wrote it up as sort of social-psychological analysis of the issues presented to the patient as a function of being in a hospital. I am still really pleased with that study. In a way, it steered me towards what later became my research mode, that is, observational study. I got my Ph.D. in 1956.
Dr. P: During the last year of my stay at NYU, I had begun analytic training. At that time, I wrote an application to NIMH for a Research Career Development Award. I received one to start in the fall of 1962. It supported me and my research for the next six years at the Downstate Medical Center. That research grew out of the clinical work I did moonlighting at the Hudson Guild Counseling Service while I was at NYU. You will see how all the threads of my
life intertwine. At the Counseling Service, I saw patients in therapy. There also was a therapeutic nursery — and the outside psychoanalytic consultant for that nursery was Margaret Mahler. She was very interested in, as she put it in those days, the possibility that a little bit will go a long way in the treatment of early disturbance in children. She thought that if these kids were in a nursery with a good, sensitive, clinically-supervised teacher, for a few hours a week, they might make very substantial gains. I did the assessments on all of those children for a number of years.
Dr. S: Was Margaret Mahler's presence a major reason for working there?
Dr. P: That was back in 1956. At that time, I had never heard of Margaret Mahler. I didn't have much contact with her during those five years that I tested the kids. The reports would go to her and be used in conferences. We only met once in a conference, and that meeting was not a good one. We did not see eye to eye about our respective roles. I don't know whether I should go into it in more detail; it was a difficult meeting, but…
Dr. S: No blood was spilled on the floor?
Dr. P: No. The issue was simply who was going to be in charge of the material that I was presenting. She seemed to think she was! I had no doubt that she was in charge of the conference; I just thought that I was in charge of the test material that I was presenting. Some years later, when I applied to the New York Institute, she was one of my interviewers. After I was accepted, she invited me to join her in the research at the Masters' Children's Center.
Dr. S: That wasn't your next contact after that difficult meeting, was it?
Dr. P: Yes, it was — one contact at that meeting, which was not great, then she interviewed me twice for the institute, and then she invited me to join her group which was doing observational research at the Masters' Children's Center. I left the clinic where I was moonlighting, and spent a morning a week at Masters'. I observed children, talked with staff, and one evening a week met with Margaret and the others in a research group. Later, my only contact was the evening meetings. It was largely thinking and talking work, mostly in her apartment. In 1970 or so, when she had pretty much decided that she was ready to write up the work in an extensive way, she asked me to coauthor the book, , with her. Soon thereafter, Anni Bergman joined us as a third co-author. That, too, involved meeting and talking. For the most part, I wrote alone and then gave drafts of things to her.
Dr. P: In the work assessing three- and four-year old children, I found myself challenged to differentiate among them, that is, to avoid being caught up
in stereotypes or caricatures. I didn't want always to be saying, “this child is moving out of the anal phase into the oedipal phase,” or something like that. My way of finding differences among them had to do with careful delineation of what I would then call ego functions. Out of that, I gradually formulated a piece of research on the development of interests, defenses, and symptoms based on an assessment of cognitive and motor modes of function. The idea was that everybody was dealing with more or less the same drive issues. (Remember, this was back in 1961.) The real differentiation has to do with aspects of adaptive or coping style from — among other ways — a cognitive and motor point of view. There are other points of view, of course, but those are the ones I worked with. These styles lead to a particular “choice” of symptom, interest, and defense. That was the study that I carried out at Downstate. I studied 15 four-year-olds and 15 eight-year-olds and followed them up four years later.
The research received enormous praise and enormous interest from people at NIMH and from other colleagues during the years I was doing it. The research was truly creatively formulated — and led to an outcome which I would describe as an absolute zero. The combination of the two, the great praise and what seemed like the total failure, led me to feel that I would never again want to do another piece of research. In 1968, when I left Downstate and went to Einstein, I turned my back quite sharply on research.
Dr. S: By then, had you graduated from the Institute?
Dr. P: I graduated in 1968.
Dr. S: So everything came to an end. You went to the Bronx for a new beginning?
Dr. P: But, it turned out, I am pleased to say, that those years doing the research had a profound and valuable influence on my whole future career. For six years, in an unpressured way, I was able to observe children and think about the analysis of behavior of children. I don't mean the psychoanalysis of children, but the intellectual analysis of their behavior, figuring out about it. Those six years have profoundly affected all of the writing and all of the thinking I've done since. It led me in the direction I've gone since, that is, to think developmentally about clinical issues. That was a great gift the NIMH Research Career Development Award Program gave me. As you probably know, in those years the Program paid for analysis and analytic training. They gave their recipients great freedom because the whole purpose of the career award program was to put their bets on individuals, rather than to support specific projects. While I had to submit a project, I didn't have to stick with the project — essentially, they were supporting In fact, I did the project I submitted, but I had a lot of freedom to use my time as I wished.
Dr. P: No. My understanding at the time was that they did expect the research candidates to be at least half-time in academic research. I think it was phrased as the “majority of your time” or something like that. There were some further aspects to the situation at the New York Institute. They
had graduated each of us with only two control cases because, as I understand it, they did not feel they could ask us to do a third clinic case for no income. Nor could they permit us to see a private case. So they graduated us with two cases. Now the rules were changed. We could become members and practice psychoanalysis. But at a meeting of the Research Students' Committee, they somewhat shamefacedly told us that they would now like us to do a third control. The mixed feelings in the group were voiced by George Klein. He said to the Committee, “You know, I am a pretty well-known psychologist ... I've been around a long time ... I am tired of being a student!” Chuck Fisher who already had his mane of white hair answered, “George, you have to understand the workings of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. At the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, I am still viewed as a young, up-and-coming analyst!” Some of us did a third control and some of us didn't. I did and became a member.
Dr. S: And the American?
Dr. P: I didn't become a member of the American until just a few years ago, 1983 or so. Before that, it didn't seem a particularly relevant thing for me to do. I didn't need another organizational membership. But, by the early 80's, I had begun to publish fairly extensively in psychoanalysis. At that point, the American came to seem relevant to me because, in your writings, you address the larger community, not just your local society. So I looked into membership, only to discover another problem of the early graduation of the research candidates. We had not been asked to see a case through the termination phase for graduation. So back to school I went. I waited for an analytic patient to enter the termination phase and then I approached Jay Shorr and did some supervision with him. I then applied for and was certified in psychoanalyis.
Dr. S: This reminds me of a story Sidney Axelrad used to tell about the situation of the psychologist psychoanalyst. Someone rushed up to the Rabbi and said, “Rabbi, theres a goy in the synagogue.” “Well, throw him out.” “But he's not actually in the synagogue. He's just outside the door.” “Well, drag him in and throw him out.” What has been your situation with regard to teaching and supervising psychoanalyses and doing training analyses?
Dr. P: Inevitably, when one is well-known, one is seen from the outside as political. But I regard myself as not being very political. I feel that's genuine. In the earlier years, I hung out with a research crowd. I identified with the Research Career Development Awardees, for example. But starting in 1968, my crowd was Einstein — that was really my home. I ran a first-rate program, a psychology internship for many years, of which I was very proud. So, that was my home base, and I was very happy to have that as a home base. There was enough to do there. I had to do some political things in order to keep my program going, but my interest was
always in my writing and in keeping the program going. That was very comfortable for me.
Dr. S: Were you on any committees of the American Psychological Association?
Dr. P: None ... none whatsoever.
Dr. S: Did you attend their meetings?
Dr. P: Almost never.
Dr. S: Did you attend the meetings of the American Psychoanalytic?
Dr. P: Only when they were in New York.
Dr. S: Okay. Did you go to Child Analytic meetings?
Dr. P: I think twice.
Dr. S: I feel like a prosecuting attorney. So you've got this nice house in East Hampton, and you spend your time here?
Dr. P: That's it. I come out here.
Dr. S: So, how did you get involved in Division 39?
Dr. P: In spite of the fact that I was President of Division 39, before that I was really not very involved.
Dr. S: Some of the American's members may not know much about Division 39.
Dr. P: The American Psychological Association (which is a huge organization) is subdivided into what are called Divisions. These are essentially interest groups. About ten years ago a small group of psychologists got together and formed a Division of Psychoanalysis. That Division, the 39th Division of the American Psychological, picked up members rapidly. It now has roughly 2,500 members.
Dr. S: Which is about the size of the American Psychoanalytic.
Dr. P: Yes, certainly. The four plaintiffs, led by Bryant Welch, did an immensely important job for analytically oriented psychologists. I've gotten this impression from talking to many psychologists. In retrospect, it is amazing that a lawsuit was not brought long ago. I know that there are very mixed feelings about these four people, particularly about Dr. Welch, in the American Psychoanalytic. I can only say that during the course of my three years' intimate connection with this matter, my respect for that group and for Dr. Welch has grown steadily. I think they have done a good job. They have been responsive to possibilities for compromise in settlement. Of course, they have been aggressive in the pursuit of the issue. Being aggressive is a requirement if you are going to bring a lawsuit. I also think the lawsuit was a good thing for the American. I believe, as do most psychologists (despite what has been said to the contrary), that the rapid movement to implement the Gaskill proposal was stimulated by the lawsuit. After the three earlier committees were stymied, that the Gaskill suddenly moved so quickly must have been the result of the lawsuit. Granted there was some movement anyway, but the lawsuit really got it off the ground.
It is clear that the International was not supportive of the American. That the American was out of step with world psychoanalysis is evident. If the lawsuit helps to get the American back in step, I think it will be all to the good. This is especially true because I think there is a wonderful pool of psychologists waiting out there. I know people at
many institutes feel the same way and will be happy to have psychologist candidates. You have only to look at the large number of psychologists who have already been accepted.
Opinion among the psychologists about the lawsuit was divided. Some members were concerned that the Division was giving support (financial and otherwise) to something about which we were not knowledgeable enough. They asked for a discussion of the role of the Division in the lawsuit. An emergency meeting was held in March 1987, during the year I was President. A decision was taken that the members of the Executive Board would serve as an oversight committee and would be consulted before any major decisions were made in the suit.
Another problem came up largely via psychologists in New York City where there are training institutes for psychologists. These institutes are run by quite senior and respected psychologist analysts who have managed to get their training in a variety of different ways. While generally supportive of the suit, they were concerned that the American might open its doors so widely that they would be deprived of all the best clinical psychologist applicants. I personally do not believe that is about to happen. First, I don't believe the American is going to open its doors wide. Second, there are many psychologists who prefer being trained in psychologist institutes because of the whole history of tensions between the disciplines. This is, as I said, a local New York issue. It is simply not an issue for psychologists all around the country who do not have psychologist institutes to protect.
Dr. S: I understand that. It is an interesting problem. For my third hard question, I want to pick on another statement of yours. During the debates in the committees before the Gaskill, at meetings of institutes and societies, at Council meetings, a variety of arguments were put forward. People who opposed admitting psychologists were accused of being concerned only with their pocket books. Similar arguments were put forward by psychologists and, indeed, seem to be the major legal justification for the lawsuit. Such arguments did not take into account that
some medical analysts had intensely held views on the subject that had nothing whatever to do with their pocket-books. I heard it said, though never publicly, that many of those who favored training psychologists did so for financial reasons. It was said that the pocketbooks of a certain number of training analysts would be affected by the “shortage of candidates” as would their desire to teach. So here is a “financial” argument on the other side. I am not really sure just what a “shortage of candidates” means. Where is it written that we have to have so many candidates a year to fill up our institutes? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Dr. P: For a long time (until the actual Gaskill vote), I believed that the people who were the prime movers for accepting psychologists were those training analysts and teachers who, as you say, wanted to have candidates to teach, to supervise, and to analyze. The members at large may have been opposed on economic grounds and some training analysts may have been for the admission of psychologists on economic grounds. I am sure that the motivations were many and complicated.
I would not have objected if people from the American had simply said, “I prefer training people in my own field, I want to train medical doctors. I want, in a sense, to raise my own children. I want to create a posterity for myself.” I am sympathetic with that position. When I first came to Einstein, there were certain seminars that were reserved for the residents or for the child psychiatry fellows. Some psychology interns wanted to join those seminars. At first, I worked hard to gain access for them. Gradually, I changed my views. I have come to believe it valuable to have some seminars reserved for people in the same discipline. Such seminars serve the purpose of group formation and professional identification very well. I always kept one or two seminars reserved for the psychology interns at Einstein. This arrangement is not just for their sake, but for mine, too. I like it. But, by and large, I did not hear that kind of statement. Maybe that was a deeply felt belief and maybe some people felt that kind of statement wouldn't go over well. Let me tell you about a meeting I attended.
Dr. S: And then you came to New York?
Dr. P: Yes, directly. George Klein had been my professor in my first year at Harvard. He left for NYU and, when I got my degree, I contacted him. By that time, he and Robert Holt had set up the Research Center for Mental Health at NYU. I was a post-doctoral fellow for two years and then stayed on four more years as a member of the research faculty. Broadly, we were doing research in the area of the psychoanalytic theory of thinking.
Dr. S: I assume that while you were working on your doctorate and then with George Klein and Robert Holt, your interest in psychoanalysis grew and flourished. What was the tipping point for you?
Dr. P: Psychoanalysis was part of my graduate education. I had a year's seminar with George Gardner, who was a well-known analyst in Boston, the director of both the Children's Hospital Department of Psychiatry and the Judge Baker Clinic. There was a lot of exposure to psychoanalysis in other seminars. The years at NYU involved psychoanalytic research. At that time I moonlighted a substantial number of hours a week doing psychotherapy at a clinic supervised by analytically-oriented people, earning my keep at all of three dollars an hour. And I was in analysis.
I suppose the tipping point was when George Klein, who had begun his analytic training at the Menninger Foundation, resumed it at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute as a CORST candidate thereby placing the idea of psychoanalytic training in the minds of the rest of us, the younger people who were on the staff at the Research Center. He was followed first by Don Spence, then Irving Paul, and then by Leo Goldberger, and myself in 1961.
Dr. S: Were there any other psychologists at the New York Institute besides the five of you from NYU?
Dr. P: Dave Wolitzky came soon after us, but no, I believe there were no other psychologist-candidates. There were certainly no psychologists who were my teachers.
Dr. S: Do you know if other psychologists were applying in those years?
Dr. P: I don't really know. I understand that there were people who had been trained there years before in a program that did not include clinical work. I think George Klein was the first CORST person to have full clinical training, and the rest of us followed him. Since then there have been a number of others.
Dr. S: How did it work?
Dr. P: It worked just fine. We took the first year courses and sometime during the second year applied for waivers to do the clinical work. I knew that it was a process that had to be taken quite seriously, that not everybody got the waiver. There didn't seem to be any question in my case. I was doing research which was clearly psychoanalytic in its orientation, and justifying clinical training seemed not to be a problem at all.
Dr. S: When you say some people didn't get CORST waivers, you mean in places other than the New York Institute, around the country?
Dr. P: I don't know when the CORST program started, I suspect we were very near the beginning of it, but you can just read the Journal and see in the Committee Report that a certain number of people are turned down for waivers each year.
Dr. S: I see. Where did you go after NYU?
Dr. S: Do you miss that work?
Dr. P: Working with Margaret in the working-together years was not always easy — I don't think I find it easy to be a co-author with anybody — for the same reason that she and I didn't see eye to eye in that first meeting. Who is in charge? To whom does it belong? But I felt and feel very close to Margaret. She was a good friend, and I am still very fond of her. When the book was published in 1975, and some of the struggles of writing together came to an end, we were able to have a much less embattled relationship as friends and colleagues which continued until her death. Dr. Van Praag, the Chairman at Einstein, had inaugurated a series of awards in psychiatry through the Department of Psychiatry. Some awards had been given in biological psychiatry and the like, but the first one in psychoanalysis was given to Margaret. I had the pleasure of being able to go to her home to inform her and ask her if she would accept it. She said “No,” in an exaggerated tone, with obvious great pleasure. She asked when it would be given. I told her that a large conference would be organized around it and that it would take place a full year hence. She said, “Can't you hurry it up?” She was not certain of her time. As it turned out, it was really close to the time of her death. The award was given posthumously.
A second memory which is very special to me dates from the publication of her Brill lecture. She gave me a reprint of the published talk, which appeared in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. She inscribed it “To Fred, my belovedly stubborn colleague, with resentful appreciation.” She gave it to me with great pleasure, and I received it with great pleasure. And that does characterize a lot of our relationship. It was embattled and affectionate.
Dr. S: Had you known before that you wanted to work with kids?
Dr. P: It's interesting. I don't know if it shows something about my breadth or about my blindness, but I have never made a distinction between working with children and adults. Like now, my developmental thinking is largely organized around issues in adult work. So, I don't know. I did my pre-internship clinical work both with children and adults, I did my internship with children, but I never thought that I was mainly interested in doing clinical work with them. During those moonlighting years at the clinic in New York, my work was probably half with children and half with adults. I was interested in both. My analytic training is all adult, as is my practice today. But I write on development.
Dr. S: How did that come about?
Dr. S: When you first went to Einstein, you didn't go there as a researcher?
Dr. P: No, I went as the Director of Psychology in the Division of Child Psychiatry and then a few years later, I became overall Director of Psychology at the Bronx Municipal Hospital Center, and more recently, the other title that I now have. It was ironic. I remember a conversation with Eleanor Galenson and Victor Rosen early in the game at Einstein. It became clear that they had been so eager for me to come because they were interested in research on children, Victor on language and Eleanor on the work that she was beginning with therapeutic and normal nurseries. When I informed them that I had come to Einstein because I wanted to get away from research and do clinical work and teaching, they were struck by the irony of it. In a certain sense, I have not done research since then; I have not done data collecting work since 1968 when I left Downstate. I certainly have written extensively, and I think of my writing as being heavily influenced by the kind of empirical observational background that research during my graduate training and afterwards gave me.
Dr. S: You don't consider the work you do now research?
Dr. P: Well, not really. My training and research experience-City College, Harvard, NYU, Downstate-all involved data collection. They all led me to define research as some kind of systematic data collection process. It doesn't have to be experimental. It can be observational. It can be relatively naturalistic. In that sense, if you want to call doing analytic work research, I am willing to call it that. But you begin to blur the meaning. So, by research, I mean some reasonably systematic data collection process, and psycholanalysis is not that in the same way. You can do research on psychoanalysis, but that's a formal process.
Dr. S: When you came to Einstein, and when you finished your analytic training, what did you do about practicing? How did that go?
I ask this because we know, you and I, that you signed a pledge, or something like that, not to practice. Was such a pledge required?
Dr. P: When we in that early group applied to the New York Institute, we were asked to sign a pledge that we would not practice analysis. No one was supposed to practice analysis during their training anyway, but I think our pledge included not practicing afterwards. I told my interviewers that I didn't know what I would do about analysis afterwards, but I certainly expected to practice psychotherapy. For the rest, I'd have to decide later. That did not seem to be a problem for either of them. The crunch came later, when all of the initial five had graduated. It turned out that if we were to become members of the society, according to the bylaws, we were supposed to agree to practive neither psychoanalysis nor psychotherapy. So, none of us joined. Two or three years later, Sam Atkin became president of the society. He asked us why we hadn't joined. Together, we wrote a long letter, the nub of which was that we were interested in joining, but that the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute had no right to tell us not to practice psychotherapy — whether they had the right to tell us not to practice psychoanalyis was something else — since we had trained independently as clinical psychologists. The bylaws were changed in no time flat and membership was opened up to us. I hadn't been practicing at that time anyway because the terms of the Research Career Development Award were such that you couldn't have outside income. When I first went to Einstein in 1968, the terms of my tenured professorship were such that I could not have outside income. My private practice began in 1970 when Einstein changed its rules, which was just about the time we became members. So, I never had a moral conflict. But if the other aspects of my situation had been different, I would have practiced. By and large, the people in that early group were not heavily into practice. All of us remained in full-time academic work, although we all now practice.
Dr. S: After Sam Atkin shepherded the change of the bylaws, could you also practice psychoanalyis?
Dr. P: Yes. It was clear then that the New York Psychoanalytic would exercise control at the entry gate in terms of who was selected as a research candidate, but that they would not exercise control over their future lives.
Dr. S: Did the CORST waiver require any promises?
Dr. P: At Einstein I was regarded as a psychologist and as an analyst. I was invited to supervise the analytic psychotherapy of psychiatrists and psychologists. I wrote and taught seminars pretty much in any area I wanted to. But my most formal teaching of analytic subjects has come through my connection with the New York University Post-Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. I have been on their faculty since 1975. More recently I have been on the faculty of the New York Freudian Society. I haven't taught there until now simply because I don't have enough time. At both places, I do training analyses and supervision.
Dr. S: So you have been teaching and doing training analyses at an institute that is not part of the American despite the ruling that members of the American aren't permitted to do that.
Dr. P: Yes — and I never got any flack either. There was never any problem and I never expected that there would be. Not until 1983 were the formal bylaws of the American changed. I have heard stories of people getting flack. I think that as a psychologist, teaching in an institute for psychologists, I was much less likely to be questioned. They may have thought, “He is a psychologist, and we really can't ask him not to teach people in his own discipline.” My experience may have been unique in some ways. I don't want to say there were no problems for other analysts teaching analysis to psychologists. I taught a full year course in psychoanalytic developmental theory which was a natural for me. Recently, I have been teaching a seminar on the clinical use of dreams. It's not a dream theory course but a clinical course. I've enjoyed it a lot. Actually, in general, I enjoy teaching a lot. I've never been invited to teach a course at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Recently, I was invited to start the procedure for applying to be a training analyst there.
Dr. S: When did this invitation arrive?
Dr. P: During the lawsuit. I was invited by two people who are friends, senior people at the New York Psychoanalytic. I do not want to say that the only reason that I was asked to apply was the lawsuit, though it may have been part of the reason.
Dr. S: If you can't lick them, invite them to join you.
Dr. P: Anyway, I was invited and it was about a year ago during the lawsuit. I have chosen not to apply, not because of the suit, but because of the commitment it would take in terms of time. I don't need to be a training analyst there as a source of analytic patients right now. Fortunately, that's not a problem. And my teaching is elsewhere.
Dr. S: It is really not so interesting to address why you were asked during the lawsuit. We will never know. What would be interesting to address is the fact that you are an internationally known analyst, you are a clinician, your writing is to the greatest extent clinical, you are an experienced and sought-after teacher — why weren't you asked before?
Dr. P: I don't know. My personal style is not to feel discriminated against. That just isn't my way of feeling about myself. Some people have said that I am being unrealistic. They see the lack of an invitation to become a training analyst or to teach as a sign of discrimination. It is also possible that the New York Institute just doesn't invite people to become training analysts or to teach unless they are more active in the organization than I was. Perhaps you really have to make it known that you are seeking that kind of thing. I am not active at the New York Institute right now. I attend the meetings sometimes, but I am not on any committees. As I said before, it was not the primary site of my life work. I suspect that had I been an M.D., I would have been invited earlier, both because of the degree and because the New York Institute would have been more important to me.
Dr. S: Are there training analysts who are not M.D.s?
Dr. P: There are none from the group of CORST graduates.
Dr. S: That is an interesting fact, though, again, for the CORST graduates, the New York Psychoanalytic may not have been where the action was. So these last 20 years, you've been observing, writing, doing some administrative work, teaching, supervising, practicing. It seems to me that you have had the best of all the worlds that psychoanalyis has to offer. Probably the one thing you haven't mentioned is professional political activity. As you have said, the New York Institute and Society were not where your home was. Neither was the American. You joined it really very late in your career. Did you have a home? Who did you hang out with? Which street corner, which cafeteria?
Dr. P: It is quite large as Divisions go. It is an interest group, so one need not be a trained analyst to be a member. You need only to be a Ph.D. level psychologist and a member of the APA, the psychologist APA that is. I am never sure which is my APA. Division 39 is very important professionally and emotionally to analytically-oriented psychologists. When I became President, I traveled around the country a bit and spoke to people in different cities in the local chapters. I realized what Division 39 meant to them. In Division 39, they found a home, a place for national meetings, a place to present papers and meet other psychologists with similar interests. They could also meet senior people who were trained as analysts, people who could serve as models. They were in limbo before it came into existence.
The formation of the Division has been an extraordinarily important event for psychologists and it has been very gratifying for me to participate in it and to attend its meetings. That I became President was sort of an accident. I think people become presidents of professional organizations via one of two routes. In the first route, they become president because they have done a lot of work in the organization. They may also be fine people, very smart, they may have published a lot, etcetera, but their eventual move into top level administrative and executive positions is the result of the work they have done in and for the organization. The other route is a form of acknowledgement of professional contributions. That is the route through which I became President. One day I got a call saying that I had been nominated.
Dr. S: When was that?
Dr. P: 1984. Initially I was going to refuse, but two things led me to say yes. In the spring of '84 I had given up much of my administrative work at Einstein. I had the time. The second thing was this. Saying no was sort of an habitual automatic response. I thought, “I don't do that kind of thing. I chose to teach and write and do clinical work.” As I was about to call the nominating committee to refuse, I found myself hesitating. I did a little self-analysis (not very deep) and I discovered that I felt that I was denying myself a nice experience, one that occurs only once in a lifetime. So I decided not to deprive myself of that nice professional experience, and so I said yes. And the experience was indeed that. I felt a real sense of pleasure in and responsibility for the people within the Division. The major foci of my Presidential year were education and standards. Because of the lawsuit, it was an interesting time to be President. I found that by being straightforward, I was able, I think, to be respected, and reasonably trusted, by both sides. It was a good experience. Through it, I was able to learn a lot about psychologists and their feelings about the lawsuit. My term expired just two weeks ago. In the future, I will participate in meetings and things like that, but I don't anticipate a deeper involvement.
Dr. S: Maybe you could tell us something about the lawsuit, both from your own point of view and from that of Division 39.
Dr. P: Let me begin by saying that I feel that the initiation of the suit was an exceptionally important and valuable thing for psychologists. The suit was not brought by Division 39, but by four individuals who were members of Division 39. For obvious reasons, Division 39 became interested in the suit and contributed to its support. Probably no more than five percent of the total cost came from the Division itself.
Dr. S: But weren't the members of Division 39 asked to contribute?
Dr. P: Yes, but probably only five percent of the total legal cost came from the Division's budget. Many members contributed as individuals.
Dr. S: Were they requested by the Division to contribute? Did a letter go out saying please give money? Was there an assessment? I seem to recall that there was.
Dr. P: For the last three or four years there has been a $15 assessment added to the annual dues.
Dr. S: Of Division 39 or of the American Psychological?
Dr. P: Of Division 39. So, with 2,500 people we are talking about…
Dr. S: $150,000.
Dr. P: Oh, that is a large amount.
Dr. S: I thought there was even more than that, that there was a larger assessment. I may be wrong. I don't know.
Dr. P: I think there were also a few lump sum payments of about $10,000 each.
Dr. S: Did Division 39 have an official stance supporting the lawsuit?
Dr. S: When you think about “all around the country,” a psychiatric resident in the best residency in South Dakota couldn't get analytic training either. What is our responsibility to make analytic training available to people all around the country? That isn't a question of the discipline to which the person belongs. It is simply a question of responsibility.
Dr. P: Maybe, but you have to consider the financial factor. I remember when I was at Downstate, people from, I think, Rochester flew down weekly for seminars. Because, by and large, psychologists earn considerably less than psychiatrists, that kind of traveling is not available to them. So for them to get analytic training they would have to move to another city. In this instance, it would mean moving to New York City to get analytic training, and New York is already a very crowded market for individual psychotherapists. The present situation, the not very broad opening of doors, but rather the Gaskill process, has a chance of making everyone reasonably content.
Dr. S: I want to bring up three difficult questions. First, since analysts who are members of the American can now train people at institutes not affiliated with the American, and since people so trained now have direct access to the International, why do psychologists want to have the institutes affiliated with the American opened to them? This is a separate but equal sort of question.
Dr. P: I think there are two very rational reasons why psychologists would want to go to institutes of the American. In places where some medical people are contributing to the training of psychologists, it is not the most senior, most publicly regarded analysts who come over to teach in the budding psychology institutes. Those who are already training analysts have not much to gain unless they have an ideological commitment to the training of psychologists. It is the middle level people who are eager to teach and who have not been invited to be training analysts in their own institutes who are most likely to be teachers in psychologist institutes. It is really a separate but not quite equal situation.
Dr. S: It is not unlike the situation in parts of the country where there are no institutes. It is unlikely that people who are already training analysts at their own institutes will pack up and travel across the country. It is those same middle level non-training analysts who would be teaching in the psychologist institutes who go to start the new institutes in geographically deprived areas. The same separate and not quite equal situation.
Dr. P: There is some analogy. The other reason for the objection to separate institutes is that, in those cities where a training institute of the American already exists, it is just more expeditious to begin training there. Many of the cities which have institutes of the American do not have large enough cadres of psychologists at a level where they can even be active in forming a new institute.
Dr. S: My second series of questions concerns the Post Graduate Institute at NYU where you teach. Can social workers be trained there?
Dr. P: No. I think the institute occasionally has taken doctoral level people who are not Ph.D.s in psychology. I don't know if any of them were D.S.W.s.
Dr. S: So you have a situation where the institute at which you teach is not training other mental health professionals, D.S.W.s, M.S.W.s, people with master's in counseling, etcetera. What about that? What are your feelings about it.
Dr. P: I understand the imbalance of saying the NYU Post Doctoral Institute will essentially take only Ph.D.s in psychology while the American Psychoanalytic should open its doors to non-M.D.s.
Dr. S: Does your institute accept M.D.s?
Dr. P: I am not sure if they would accept M.D.s. I don't know of any who have gone there.
Dr. S: These are interesting questions. Does one go along with what is? Who draws the line? Where is it drawn? Are the issues moral, political, or practical? Is it simply a question of who has the energy and money to initiate a lawsuit?
Dr. P: And the motivation, yes. I am not sure that I can argue effectively on one side or the other of the implied issue here. My own view when I began to get involved was that people have the right to choose whom they want to train. I had no personal objection to a decision by the American to train only medical people, probably in part because I had no personal problem. I was also quite comfortable with the notion of a graduate department of psychology offering a program only for psychologists. At the same time, I was not sure that the American's stance was in its own best interest, given the shortage of candidates and given the excellence of potential psychologist candidates. I cannot answer your question on the sort of high moral ground of what is fair and what is right. I think the lawsuit has been extremely important to psychologists and valuable to the American as well. I simply intended some mix of strategy statements and fact statements, not moral statements.
Four or five years ago, there was a meeting of the membership of the New York Psychoanalytic held at the suggestion of the American to provide a forum for people to discuss their attitudes about accepting psychologists. There was a panel of five people. Four were medical analysts who had had some role on the pre-Gaskill committees and I was invited as a psychologist. I had decided that I would sit back quietly and see how the discussion went. I felt that if I pressed too hard it would seem that I had an ax to grind. Each of the others made a few remarks about their experiences on the committees. Dr. Kenneth Calder spoke in a very articulate and passionate way in favor of opening up admissions to psychologists. Then the discussion was opened to the membership for questions. Only about 50 people were present. Judging from their questions, they were hostile to the idea. I can't remember the nature of their objections clearly. I only remember feeling that they were not objections I could respect. This may be a distortion, but I remember forming the distinct impression that the main comments from the floor were either irrational views about psychologists or personal views of a monetary kind. They were not impressive. Despite my initial resolve, I started to participate actively. I said some of the things that I have said today. One of the objections was that they would be flooded with psychologists. I did not feel that would be the case. I remember pointing out that many of the best psychologists want to be trained by psychologists. I also remember pointing out that there were excellent psychologists whose presence would be a real gain for the institute. They were not applying because they did not have research backgrounds. In general, I remember feeling that the objections were not of a noble kind.
Dr. S: That sounds like what I have heard, too. But it seems to me that I heard, privately, other objections that were probably not stated at the meeting. I was reminded of some of them when you spoke of identity and group formation. For many analysts, their medical identity and identifications are very important. Their identity as analyst is subsumed under or is a part of their medical identity. They fear that “floods” of psychologists will be trained. They worry that something like the “tip” phenomena, seen in racially unstable neighborhoods or in places like medical schools when the number of women reaches a certain level, will occur. They feel that if psychoanalysis ceases to be a medical discipline, they will suffer a painful loss of an important part of their identity. At the same time, I don't think it is written anywhere that people whose medical and analytic identities are synonymous have to be gratified or that they can't change. The issue of the relationship of psychoanalysis to psychiatry and the question of third-party payment always comes up in this meeting. Would you care to address it?
Dr. P: Again, I don't have that much to say. I am well aware of the problem. I remember feeling, that same evening at the New York Psychoanalytic, that I would have been comfortable with the statement implied in one of the things you just said. If someone had said, “Look this is just not the time because of problems with third-party payments and the whole relationship with the American Psychiatric. It is a practical matter, period.” I would have no problem respecting that statement. I don't believe that such a simple statement was made. Maybe people are not comfortable saying that, since it seems self-serving, but to me it seems self-serving in a valid way.
Dr. S: I don't really know what else I want to ask you. What else do you want to say?
Dr. P: Only one thing. It is actually the very first thing I thought when you called about arranging this time. You may remember that I expressed some doubt about what I would have to say, although, as it turns out, I've had plenty to say. You said, “Well, we can talk about the lawsuit, we can talk about Division 39, we can talk about lay analysis,” As soon as you said “lay analysis” I had a memory. Why that memory occurred is perfectly obvious. I remembered something that I heard when I was an adolescent. I had heard it said that “scientists have shown that, because of the size of the wing in relation to the weight of the body, the bumblebee cannot fly. Bumblebees, not knowing this, go ahead and fly anyway.” And that is what I thought about lay analysis. The medical people, for all these years, have been deciding whether or not the bumblebee indeed can fly — but, all that time we have been flying anyway. As it turns out, the real effect of the prolonged debate is that the American has not been able to influence the whole development of the training of psychologists. They have not been able to set standards for that training. I think they have lost some control of the process by not entering into it early enough.
Dr. S: Fred, I'm very grateful to you for having given me all this time. I'm particularly grateful for the openness and freedom with which you spoke. What you have said and the way you've said it will be very useful. Thank you.
Dr. P: Thank you.