New Orleans's first psychoanalyst, Anna Colomb, established her practice here in 1942. She had been trained in Washington, DC, and was a Charter Member of the old Baltimore-Washington Society for Psychoanalysis. Samuel Barkoff, a native of New Orleans, graduated from the Baltimore-Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis in 1943 and returned to New Orleans in 1945. They, with the support of Ernest Hadley of Washington and Lewis Hill of Baltimore, organized the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Study Group under the sponsorship of the Baltimore-Washington Institute. These four analysts constituted the faculty of the Study Group, which began formal psychoanalytic training in the fall of 1948 with a student body of 13 local psychiatrists. Later that year the faculty was augmented by Russell Anderson, Therese Benedek, and Edith Weigert, who made periodic teaching visits, and by Theodore Watters, who had returned to New Orleans in 1947 after completing training at the Institute for Psychoanalysis, Chicago.
In 1949-50, Norman Rucker, a graduate of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research who had settled in New Orleans, joined the faculty, as did Emmy Sylvester of Chicago, who came for teaching visits. Complete training could not be given in New Orleans because there were only two Training and Supervising Analysts (Drs. Colomb and Barkoff). Consequently candidates had to “commute” to Washington two weekends a month to obtain supervision and to take some didactic courses. After the split of the Baltimore-Washington Institute in 1952, the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute assumed sponsorship of the New Orleans program.
The first candidates to graduate from the New Orleans Study Group were Carl Adatto and Kenneth Beach in 1952. They became members of the Washington Psychoanalytic Society and were admitted to Active Membership in the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1953.
Through the developmental years of the New Orleans program, many other analysts from various parts of the country contributed their talents. These visiting faculty members included Rex Buxton, Edna Dyar, Phyllis Greenacre, Bertram Lewin, Leo Bartemeier, Robert Cohen, Sidney Berman, Alexander Halperin, Lucie Jessner, Robert Morse, and Marion Richmond. As the local faculty grew in number and experience, the need for out-of-town teachers diminished. After 1963, they were listed on the faculty roster as lecturers and made infrequent visits to augment the didactic classes. Maxwell Gitelson, Margaret Mahler, Stuart Miller, William Niederland, and Harold Searles were in this group.
Three of our out-of-town mentors have always been held in special esteem by local faculty and candidates fortunate enough to have known them. These were Ernest Hadley, Rex Buxton, and Bertram Lewin, who gave unstintingly of their time, knowledge, and wisdom and always provided warm support when the fledgling psychoanalytic group encountered developmental crises. In more recent years we have benefited from short, intensive teaching sessions with Jacob Arlow, Charles Brenner, Rudolph Loewenstein, Eveoleen Rexford, Albert Solnit, and Robert Wallerstein.
In the fall of 1953, Dr. Rucker was appointed Training and Supervising Analyst, and the American Psychoanalytic Association changed the Study Group's designation to that of Training Center. By this time there were eight active members of The American in New Orleans, and these people organized the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Society.
Carl Adatto, Kenneth Beach, and William Thompson joined the Training Center faculty in the 1954-55 academic year. They were the first local graduates to become teachers in the Training Center. Beginning that year, a four-year didactic curriculum was instituted, and a new first-year class of candidates has started every other year since then.
With Dr. Barkoff's unexpected death in 1955, the Training Center was left with only two Training and Supervising Analysts (Drs. Colomb and Rucker). A group of senior Training Analysts from the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute conducted a prolonged evaluation of the work of a number of local analysts. Four were appointed Training and Supervising Analysts in 1957. These were local graduates Adatto and Beach, along with Irwin Marcus and I, who had been trained at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, respectively.
Visiting teachers still contributed to our program, but more and more of the didactic courses and supervision were the responsibility of the New Orleans faculty. Finally, in May 1961, the Training Center was fully accredited as an institute by the American Psychoanalytic Association. It thus became the first psychoanalytic institute in the South.
Dr. Miles is Training and Supervising Analyst Emeritus at the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Institute and Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the Tulane University School of Medicine.
The New Orleans Psychoanalytic Society had been organized in 1953 and was accepted as a Constituent Society of The American in May 1955. Although the Society has no formal affiliation with the Institute, most Institute graduates have joined the Society. In addition, a number of analysts in New Orleans and other parts of the South, not members of the Institute, have joined the Society. As of this writing, the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Society has 54 members, including 13 Corresponding Members (from Texas) and four Adjunct Members. Adjunct Members are not psychoanalysts but have demonstrated deep interest in and support of psychoanalysis. One, in particular, deserves special mention. Thomas B. Lemann has been our wise and everhelpful legal advisor for more than 30 years.
In 1972, Dr . Marcus organized a program in Child/Adolescent Psychoanalysis, which was fully approved by The American in 1975 and has continued to grow. Four of our present Training and Supervising Analysts also serve as Supervisors in Child and Adolescent Analysis. Geographic training for candidates from the Houston/Galveston area became available in the 1968-69 academic year. Candidates had to “commute” to New Orleans two weekends a month for classes and some of their supervision. For two years during the growth of the Houston/ Galveston program, Carl Adatto and William Thompson made periodic visits to Houston to consult on educational matters and to participate in teaching. The Houston/Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute was formally approved by The American in 1978.
Personal analysis became available to candidates in Dallas in 1973-74 with Robert Long, a graduate of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, who had been appointed a Training and Supervising Analyst by the New Orleans Institute under the Geographic Rule. His death in 1975 had a significant effect on analytic training in Dallas, as he had been the only training analyst in that city. In 1977, Merlan DeBolt, a New Orleans Institute graduate practicing in Dallas, was appointed as Training and Supervising Analyst under the Geographic Rule. Since then, with the influx of other fully trained analysts, the program in Dallas has developed rapidly and was approved by The American as a Provisional Institute in 1988.
In addition to its primary goals of training clinical psychoanalysts and fostering psychoanalysis in Houston/Galveston and Dallas, the New Orleans Institute has continuing education programs, including theoretical and clinical seminars for psychiatric residents at the LSU Medical School and at the Tulane School of Medicine. The New Orleans Institute was honored in the past year by an award from the Mary S. Sigourney Award Trust for achievement in psychoanalytic education.
The New Orleans psychoanalytic community is anticipating the 1991 Annual Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association and is looking forward too to 1998, when our Institute will celebrate 50 years of psychoanalytic education in New Orleans.