Ray Raskin, current chairman of the committee, describes its origins and early activities. Begun in 1962, around the time of the Berlin Airlift, the committee was founded with the idea that analysts, by virtue of their theory of human motivation and their experience with patients, might make meaningful contributions to the understanding of national and international social problems. From the start a very active committee, its early members included Frances Bonner, Robert Dorn, Ed Joseph, Robert Ivan, Seymour Lustman, Joseph Michaels, Burness Moore, Bernard Pacella, Calvin Settlage and Alberta Szalita. The group engaged in the study of a number of social issues, including abortion, racism, and child abuse.
An early study group of interdisciplinary composition studied the biographies of international political leaders in an attempt to understand their development, while another group assigned analysts to work with police departments in the selection of recruits and to help officers cope with the stress and anxiety engendered by their jobs.
Robert Dorn of the UCLA Medical School began to study children in families at high risk for social traumata. This project led to the formation, in the late 1960's, of the committee's Vulnerable Child Study. The group's first chair, Eleanor Pevenstedt, was suceeded by Ted Cohen, who has held the position for the past 20 years; he will be publishing his work in the not too distant future. In addition, study group members Alex Burland and Ray Raskin have written a chapter summarizing the findings of this workshop for “Adult Analysis and Childhood Sexual Abuse,” edited by Howard Levine, which will be published in 1992.
The Community Psychiatry Committee of the American, originally chaired by Viola Bernard, was formed at the instigation of the Social Issues Committee, with strong support from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.
In 1975 the name of the committee was changed, the term “Social Problems” giving way to the broader and less controversial “Social Issues.”
In the late seventies a consultation service for Congrssional committees was proposed to provide a list of analysts who could act as consultants in the areas of the vulnerable child, teenage pregnancy, foster care, maternal and child welfare, aging, drugs and alcohol.
More recendy, the Committee has been running three workshops at the annual meetings of The American: “Psychoanalysis of Adults Who Were Sexually Abused as Children,” “The Impact of AIDS on Psychoanalytic Work,” and the “Vulnerable Child” discussion group.
In concluding his survey of the committee's nearly thirty years of existence, Dr. Raskin notes that his predecessors “showed great initiative in tackling a wide range of issues. They were more active, while we today are more reactive. We have reacted to threats against personal liberty, privacy and professional confidentiality by proposing resolutions to the Executive Council. In this vein, we submitted a statement six or seven years ago protesting the federal government's Health and Human Services Administration's “Squeal Rule” which required gynecologists to notify parents if a minor sought birth control or an abortion. We felt this to be a severe breach of patient confidentiality. In 1990 we re-issued the 1970 Pro Choice statement on the issue of abortion, and we have reacted to the homosexual activist groups by finally issuing a clear statement against the prejudice they suffer.
“I would like greater dissemination of our position statements and resolutions. As the Committee on Public Relations is trying to improve the perception of psychoanalysis nationwide, I had hoped they might distribute our statements more widely. Our Pro-Choice position was issued because I thought that the Supreme Court was becoming more reactionary and I wanted The American to go on record on the issue of abortion. I would like our committee to be more active.”
The current members of the committee are: Alex Burland and Ted Cohen from Philadelphia, Irma Bland from New Orleans, Stanley Cath from Boston, Joanne Fineman from Santa Fe, Milt Hollar and Ray Raskin from New York, Larry Pomer from Los Angeles and Brenda Solomon from Chicago.
The recently drafted Statement of Purpose makes explicit the committee's mandates to: 1) identify and call attention to emerging social issues; 2) clarify the current and potential impact of these issues on the psychological health and functioning of individuals; 3) further define the interface of these issues with our theory and clinical work; 4) encourage research and education in regards to these issues; and 5) where necessary and appropriate, recommend to the organization position statements on these issues consistent with the current state of our knowledge.
Although according to the Statement the committee “does not embody any particular or personal political positions” it has issued a number of statements on some controversial topics, among them homosexuality, the Vietnam war and abortion.
The Social Issues Committee, aware of the intensity with which some analysts object to The American's taking a stand on any social issue whatever, have, on a number of occasions, requested feedback from the Executive Council and the membership at large on whether such position statements should be issued at all.
Over the years, the Committee has engaged in scientific psychoanalytic studies on the impact of social problems on individuals (e.g. the effect on psychic structure of being raised in a one-parent home; clinical observations on the psychology of political activism). Other positions endorsed by the committee have, in fact, been made on moral or political grounds, as when it opposed the war in Vietnam. A third class of positions might be characterized as hybrids of “pure science” and “political opinion”; these are recommendations for political action on the basis of psychoanalytic experience. In this category falls the committee's protest of cutbacks on government spending for mental health funding for vulnerable and high risk children, an area in which analysts have credentialed expertise.
A topic which raises controversy, perhaps largely unvoiced, is the diagnostic status of homosexuality and the acceptance of homosexual
candidates and faculty at the training institutes of The American. Ray Raskin, who had attemped to convince the Executive Council to pass a resolution about homosexuals as early as 1972, stresses that the Social Issues Committee was interested in a statement “condemning prejudice and discrimination against homosexuals. We were not involved, and did not feel it would be appropriate for us to be involved, in any consideration of the question of the pathology, or lack of pathology in homosexuality.” The issue of homosexuality was taken up again at the urging of Richard Simons, in response to a letter from Richard Isay, and the Social Issues Committee submitted the position statement (which had been drafted by Richard Isay) to the Executive Council, which approved a resolution at the May 1991 meeting in New Orleans deploring: “public or private discrimination against male and female homosexually oriented individuals.”'
This is a complicated issue. Probably the majority of members of the American feel that homosexuals should enjoy the same civil liberties as heterosexuals. However, there do exist analysts who, since they consider homosexuality to be a pathological aberration of psychosexual development, believe that practicing homosexuals should not be selected as training and supervising analysts. Since this is not a politically correct opinion, it is voiced less frequently than it is held.
Charles Socarides, however, is not only willing, but eager to speak out against the Executive Council's recent position statement. Socarides, who has written widely on the subject of homosexuality and had extensive clinical experience, feels that male homosexuals should not be admitted as candidates at psychoanalytic institutes until they have undergone a personal analysis and are “on the road to the opening up of what Freud referred to as the ‘blighted germs of heterosexuality’.” Socarides is convinced that the overt homosexual suffers from “a serious developmental arrest.” There is, he argues, “a serious narcissistic disorder in all homosexuals, and important ego deficits. It is vital therefore to assess the degree of aggression and the imperativeness of the behavioral impulses before permitting a homosexual to become involved in the intense clinical interaction that analysis requires. The practice of analysis requires a well integrated character. Perversions, such as homosexuality, do give individuals a certain stability, but it is very shaky. Same-sex sex is used to ward off all sorts of pathological fantasies.” Socarides is “particularly concerned at the idea of the homosexual analyst who does not regard this as a disorder, but who is instead interested in maintaining his perversion. Such an analyst will be corrupting the analytic process by overlooking the severe pathology of internalized object relationships in his homosexual patient. If we ignore the pathologic aspects of homosexuality, we might as well throw out 100 years of our science. We will be standing our theory on its head to suit sociopolitical expediency and thereby compromising the integrity of the psychoanalytic process.”
“Were the absence of character pathology and neurotic inhibitions requisite to the position of training analyst, our institutes would be leaderless.”
Richard Friedman, author of the well reviewed Male Homosexuality: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective, disagrees. “It is outdated,” he maintains, “to think of heterosexuality as the normative outcome of psychosexual development. In fact, the determinants of sexual orientation await scientific elucidation. In the past twenty years there have been other psychoanalysts who have gained a different understanding of their homosexual patients than has Socarides. There have been many scientific attempts to differentiate homosexual and heterosexual subjects on measurable indices of psychopathology. These tests have failed to discriminate between the two groups. Homosexuality is itself not an index of pathological object relations.”
Friedman challenges Socarides' assertion that psychoanalytic ideas about homosexuality are changing because of political expediency. Noting that the “knowledge base about sexual orientation has increased dramatically in recent years,” he goes on to say that “a field's vitality may be assessed by its capacity to grow beyond theories that have become outdated because they no longer adequately integrate available data. The knowledge base about sexual orientation has increased dramatically in recent years. This is in part because of extra-analytic research in diverse fields, including psychoneuroendocrinology. Changed attitudes towards homosexuality within the psychoanalytic community are a healthy adaptive response to scientific progress.” Friedman emphasizes that a need still exists for systemic research on all aspects of sexual orientation (heterosexuality as well as homosexuality) from within psychoanalysis. This need is evidenced by the fact that Socarides and Isay, using the same method (clinical psychoanalytic experience) have arrived at opposite conclusions about homosexuality.
Other analysts note that the question of whether to admit openly gay individuals to candidacy or training analyst status does not hinge solely on one's belief regarding homosexuality's position on the spectrum of pathology. Some members of The American who, while viewing homosexuality as a manifestation of psychological disturbance, point out that no analyst is free of pathology — and that more than a few are suffering from problems that interfere to some degree with their analytic functioning. Were the absence of character pathology and neurotic inhibitions requisite to the position of training analyst, our institutes would be leaderless. The “problem” of homosexuality, these members argue, should be dealt with on the same case-by-case basis as all the other “problems” that afflict our applicants whether for candidacy or faculty.
Nonetheless, it must be said that the Executive Council's unanimous acceptance of the resolution on homosexuals does not entirely reflect the present atmosphere in the member institutes. No easy, comfortable attitude toward gay analysts can be said to prevail. As yet, Richard Isay is the only member of The American to speak openly from the perspective of the homosexual analyst. This should tell us something. In an organization as large as The American there must exist other gay analysts who fear the consequences of making themselves known.
Richard Isay points out that the stance of The American towards homosexuality will influence potential patients in their choice of treatment modality. Commenting on this aspect of the issue, he warns: “Before our institutes become places where gay and lesbian people can feel comfortable with the idea of seeking psychoanalysis, our faculties will need to learn more about the specific developmental issues confronting gay men and women. The viewpoint that frames traditional clinical work—namely, that the only normal resolution of the Oedipus complex is a heterosexual one—does not enable analysts to regard their homosexual patients in a neutral and objective manner.” Describing the May 1991 resolution as “a positive step,” he expresses disappointment over the fact that the Board of Professional Standards struck “training and supervising analysts” from the original statement, substituting the somewhat vaguer phrase “all degrees of faculty”. This action, Isay feels, “reflects the continuing ambivalence of the American with regard to homosexuality.”