Fund for Psychoanalytic Research

SKF: What do you see as the place of the Fund for Psychoanalytic Research and its activities in the life of the Association? What purposes should it be furthering, as reflected in the kind of grants that you will fund?

NM: While members of The American have financially supported its important work since the early 1970s—when it was initiated by Bob Wallerstein, then Chairman of the Committee on Scientific Activities, assisted by George Klumpner—few analysts are fully aware of the considerable scope and excellence of the projects it supports or the vital role the Fund has played over the years in helping to keep psychoanalytic research alive. It has consistently been a superb resource for investigators committed to the systematic study of psychoanalytic constructs and variables—studies that would not otherwise be funded.

Although operating on a limited scale, the Fund continues to occupy a unique place in the lives of young researchers and also some senior investigators. It has often assisted with pilot projects by investigators getting started with data collection, analysis of data, or construction of psychodynamically relevant scales and instruments.

SH: These days it's so hard to get larger grants that one almost always needs preliminary studies of some kind. That's exactly where the Fund comes in, helping people to launch something larger. Often even a very small amount of money and the acknowledgment attached to the money does wonders for a graduate or postgraduate student's self-esteem and career trajectory.

NM: Absolutely. Such grants build commitment to the pursuit of research as a career and certainly provide a leg up when one is competing against a host of academic stars for a limited pot of money.

SKF: I imagine that someone who is not working in an institutional setting—somebody who is primarily a clinician and gets an idea and wonders, “What can I do with this?”—would benefit from exposure to those who are writing grants.

SH: Unless one makes preliminary contact with people on the Fund, a direct application probably will not work out. Applications frequently have pieces missing. At the New Orleans meeting we are sponsoring a special workshop on the writing of grant applications.

NM: People often come in with very creative ideas but are not sure how to operationalize them, to break them down so they can be systematically studied. Even those with good training and familiar with available instruments may not be aware of other research teams working in the same area. We are able to connect them with an ongoing group doing research with a similar focus.

The Fund has helped some senior investigators who did not need large sums, but only some support to tide them over while they completed their psychoanalytically focused study. It is really amazing to see what has been done on these very small amounts of money.

SH: People may be between larger grants, and the Fund can be very helpful in sustaining important research that has high relevance to psychoanalysis. And there are some people who do not quite fit into any of the federal priorities, not because they're not good enough, but just because they don't conform to what the review committee has in mind. We can sometimes help some to move along until they can be funded by other sources, but our ability to do this is limited.

Two grants that we recently funded are excellent examples of “bridging” or “collaboration” grants. They are both connected not only to the rest of psychiatry in general, but also to psychoanalysis. They are going after psychoanalytic constructs very carefully within the larger context of other diagnostic systems, to see where our notions fit and where they do not.

NM: At a recent conference on research training, scientists from other disciplines felt that we as a field have become isolated from the new and exciting ideas, methods, and instruments being used in their contiguous fields. We have the tremendous job of developing a new generation of investigators really knowledgeable about psychoanalytic questions but able also to apply skills at the “cutting edge” of related fields.

SH: I believe the Fund is an important statement to the rest of the world that research is taken very seriously by the Association—empirical research, not only anecdotal, clinical research.

Both grants that we just awarded are DSM-III grants; they constitute important statements that may help to add dynamic dimensions to the diagnostic categories and so offer inputs for DSM-IV, currently in preparation. But that wasn't the reason they were awarded—the grants were awarded to the highest quality applications.

NM: One of these studies, for example, is looking at the relationship between DSM-III-R diagnoses and the way analysts at a famous psychoanalytic urban clinic are making their psychoanalytic formulations, predicting how the patient will do in the future. There could not be greater relevance.

SH: Someone came to me after my report to the Executive Council and told me how pleased he was that we weren't funding just more of “that research stuff” but, rather, research that was meaningful. I asked what made him think that. “Well, it was that DSM-III.” I think what he meant was that some other projects did not connect with him the way DSM-III does.

SKF: Do you have priorities for the kinds of research you will fund, particularly when considering research that will not qualify for funding by anybody else?

SH: We have been careful not to set priorities, judging one research project to be better than another. We would, however, look with particular favor on competent and well-executed research that would help set up the structures for further psychoanalytic research. Setting up structures for archiving psychoanalytic data or for recording sessions and transcribing, for example, is crucially important. Money for that would be not be forthcoming from anywhere else. We need to set up an infrastructure.

SKF: What do you mean by infrastructure?

SH: To take a concrete example. A number of tape-recorded psychoanalyses—somewhere between 20 and 30—have been done around the country. The aim is to collect as many of these as possible, remove any identifying information, and allow them to be used by researchers interested in doing process and outcome research. There are now many variables that can be systematically measured in these transcripts or oral tapes. In this connection the Fund's contribution has been to help set up an institution to provide this important function.

SKF: I get the sense that you see the Fund as occupying a very particular niche where its stimulative, mentor functions are at least as important as the actual grant awards.

SH: The dialogue involving the careful feedback offered about grant applications is a real modality for research training. A very successful grant application recently came about in this way.

NM: The investigator picked up on the reviewer's comments, strengthened her proposal scientifically, and came back to more enthusiastic response among the reviewers. An isolated clinician, not in an institutional setting, is lost without this kind of generative, mentoring input.

SH: There's nothing arbitrary about how the Fund deals with applications for grants. The two to three hours that the Board meets are but a fraction of the time that everybody on the Board spends. Each grant application is read by every member of the Board, which now numbers eight plus you, Steve. We try to have a good mix of clinicians with research interests and academic researchers. Each grant is also assigned two reviewers to do detailed critiques. Such a critique can require four or more hours of work. The criteria used for these evaluations cannot be stated specifically, but clarity of conceptual thought, specificity of focus, clarity of writing, ability to translate from the general statement of aims in the application to specific project operations into the ways in which things will be observed and measured—all are important.

We average six or seven grant applications per cycle, twelve to fourteen a year. These projects tend not to be ones that prove things, but, rather, to generate hypotheses to help us to understand certain of our concepts more clearly. There was concern at some point that these moneys were being used to give computers to people. Our policy has been that whatever money we give has to be justified by the particular grant. There's no bias for or against equipment.

NM: We were funding grants for a maximum of $12,000 a year for a maximum of two years. We have increased that to a maximum of $20,000 a year for a maximum of two years, terms that in special cases may be renewable.