The Baltimore-Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis can trace its history to the very origins of organized psychoanalysis in the United States. When the American Psychoanalytic Association was founded on May 9, 1911, at the Stafford Hotel on Baltimore's historic Mount Vernon square, four of the eight charter members had practices in the Maryland city.
The early development of psychoanalysis in the region was spearheaded by two eminent scientists, neither of whom worked clinically as analysts: Adolf Meyer at Johns Hopkins Hospital, who like his Swiss colleague Eugen Bleuler was later to assume an ambivalent attitude toward analysis, and William Alanson White, superintendent at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington. Others prominent in the early years were (in Baltimore) Trigant Burrow at St. Agnes Hospital and G. Lane Taneyhill at Johns Hopkins, and (in Washington) Smith Ely Jelliffe, Lucille Dooley, Percy Hickling, and Mary O'Malley, all at St. Elizabeths.
For the first decade or so, the center of organized psychoanalysis in the area was Washington, more specifically St. Elizabeths. In 1913 White and Jelliffe began publication of the first American psychoanalytic journal, The Psychoanalytic Review. The next year, the Washington Psychoanalytic Society was organized. Dues were 25 cents a month, lay members were admitted, and meetings were held twice monthly.
A second center than emerged at The Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, when Ross Chapman became superintendent there in 1920. Three years later he brought Harry Stack Sullivan, soon to become prominent in The American, to Sheppard, and together they launched what was to be a long tradition of psychoanalysis there. The “Miracle Club,” the first clinical seminar in the region, convened regularly at Sheppard, and it was there that Sullivan did much of his original work on the treatment of schizophrenics.
Meanwhile, largely because of the war, the Washington Society had disbanded in 1918. In 1924 the Washington Psychoanalytic Association was founded. A mix of classical Freudians, pupils of Stekel, and Jungians, it was to last for only six years. A number of analysts in the area remained outside the association, and teaching remained an informal affair arranged between training analyst and student, with no fixed curriculum. The association was never affiliated with The American, which in any case was not then involved in the oversight of professional standards.
On May 31, 1930, The Washington-Baltimore Psychoanalytic Society was founded, chiefly upon the initiative of Ernest Hadley, with Clara Thompson serving as its first president. Thompson, who was to become Karen Horney's partner in the later struggle at the New York Psychoanalytic, had traveled to Europe to undergo analysis with Ferenczi in the summers of 1928 and 1929, and again for longer periods from 1931 to 1933.
The founding of this Society reflected a major philosophical split in the region. Ben Karpman, a follower of Stekel and the leading spirit of the superseded and now rapidly declining association, did not join the new society but remained embittered outside it. His exclusion was the first in a series of major often traumatic splits centering around issues of personality and theoretical orientation in the Baltimore-Washington area.
The early preoccupations of the new organization were its affiliations with The American and the International Psychoanalytic Association. In 1932 the Society was admitted to membership in both, and by January of the next year an organized training program had been established. The first seminar, on Freud's five case histories, was conducted by William Silverberg, who had studied at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute from 1928 to 1930 and had been analyzed there by Franz Alexander. The training analysts were Lucille Dooley and Ernest E. Hadley in Washington, and Silverberg and Lewis B. Hill in Baltimore.
For over a decade, Hill bore the main burden of teaching in the Maryland city and conducted the majority of training analyses. His enthusiasm and energy made it possible to develop a group in Baltimore of sufficient size and cohesion to form a separate society. He was also very active in The American, where he served as president in 1940. (For many years the Baltimore-Washington Society has awarded the Lewis Hill prize to the best scientific paper by a candidate or recent graduate.)
Until 1931 there were no training institutes in the U.S., though institutes in Berlin, Vienna, Zurich, and Budapest had been developed during the preceding decade and a half. The Washington-Baltimore training program came into existence along with that of Boston in 1933, following on the heels of New York and Chicago. The program remained provisional until May 1940, when The American approved the formation of the Washington-Baltimore Psychoanalytic Institute.
In the meantime, the Washington-Baltimore Society had in 1936 begun a collaboration with the Washington School of Psychiatry, which served as fiscal agent for the Society's training committee, though the latter continued to set the curriculum. This cumbersome liaison persisted through the early 1940s, at which time the training component began to function 'ess as a unit. More-or-less autonomous groups developed in the two cities, though still a great deal of the training was carried on in common.
It became increasingly obvious that a widening and unwieldy diversity of viewpoints was developing, based primarily on the greater emphasis in Washington on Sullivan's interpersonal theories. This approach never found the same favor among Baltimore analysts, but the leading training analysts in Washington-Dexter Bullard, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, and Edith Weigert—allied themselves closely with Sullivan. Together they headed a group with a major interest in the psychotherapy of the psychoses, and this involved modifications of classical technique and theory.
Dooley and Hadley in Washington, while not discounting the values of the interpersonalist approach, tended to maintain a more Freudian position emphasizing infantile sexuality and its intrapsychic vicissitudes. They were at pains to clarify and preserve the distinctions
between Sullivan's ideas and mainstream psychoanalysis.
A very significant force in the Institute s philosophical direction was Jenny Waelder-Hall, formerly a training and supervising analyst in Vienna, who in 1943 had moved to Washington from Boston. The Washington and Baltimore Divisions had for several years considered the possibility of two separate institutes in small part because of increased travel difficulties occasioned by wartime gas rationing. Finally in 1947, motivated more by theoretical and clinical differences, Washington and Baltimore separated into two distinct societies, the Institute remaining at least formally intact.
In 1951 a Baltimore group (A. Russell Anderson, James F. Bing, Lucille Dooley, George Sam Ingalls, Rudolf Marburg, Francis McLaughlin, and Alfred Stanton), wishing to maintain and develop classical psychoanalysis, joined with Waelder-Hall and Amanda Stoughton of Washington to apply to The American for recognition of a separate Maryland-D.C. Psychoanalytic Institute and Society. This made for three groups in the area—two based in Baltimore and one in Washington—vying for recognition as institutes by the Board on Professional Standards. All three were denied on the basis that there were too many training programs in the area, and training remained splintered, though under the formal umbrella of the Washington-Baltimore Institute, until May 1952. The two Baltimore groups having by then reconciled their differences, the Board approved the formation of separate institutes in the two cities. Both had provisional status for several years before eventually being granted independent status. (Also split off at this time was a third group, composed of members practicing in New York City and led by Clara Thompson, who formed the William Alanson White Institute, which was never to gain official approval by The American.)
After the split, both the Baltimore Society and Institute increased considerably in size. The curriculum was expanded and measures taken to prevent any future divisiveness. The Chairmanship of the Education Committee and the Directorship of the Institute were conceived as positions from which to express and direct an evolving consensus and as such were considered not properly subject to the ideological preferences of the individuals holding them. These posts have passed through many hands now and tend to function more or less uniformly.
At first most of the members of the Baltimore Society and the Baltimore Institute resided in that city, but over the years the balance shifted toward Washington. To reflect that trend, the names were changed in 1968-1969 to the Baltimore-District of Columbia Institute and the Baltimore-District of Columbia Society. The main office remained in Baltimore, but increasingly the Baltimore became the administrative center and Washington, with an expanded suite of offices including a large library and classrooms, the educational center. This consolidation of educational resources was given added impetus by the advent of a training program for the Florida Psychoanalytic Group under the aegis of Baltimore-D.C.
The Florida program had its inception in 1971 following a series of informal seminars attended by Gabriel Casuso and Joseph Gurri, both originally from Cuba and then residents of Miami, at the Laurel, Florida home of Jenny Waelder-Hall. In addition to a number of Florida analysts, Leon Ferber and Paul Gray often participated in these meetings. Once the decision was made and approved to support a training program for Miami, Casuso and Gurri were appointed Geographic Rule Training analysts. The former had received his early training in England, and the latter in Boston, where he had first met Waelder-Hall when she resided in that city. To accommodate the new program, which required the Florida candidates to commute north, all didactic courses were shifted to the weekend and held in the Washington classrooms. Since the inception of the Florida program more than twenty candidates have taken the training, and seventeen have graduated. Six have been certified in adult psychoanalysis. At present there are three Geographic Rule Training Analysts in the Miami area, one of whom was one of the first candidates in the Florida program. Many of the faculty have taught classes in the Baltimore-Washington center. This fall, for the first time, all classes for Florida candidates will be taught in Miami, a significant step toward the evolution there of an independent institute.
The Baltimore-Washington Institute has long had a strong child and adolescent program, with origins going back to Waelder-Hall's arrival in the Washington suburbs from Boston in 1943. In Vienna Waelder-Hall had participated in the original child seminar, begun in 1926 and led by Anna Freud, and in the 1930s made many original contributions to child analysis. For many years the only child analyst in the Washington area, in 1948 she supervised the first child case of a candidate at the Institute. A formal seminar on child analysis was set up in 1955 under her leadership and through the encouragement of A. Russell Anderson, then Director of the Institute.
Child courses were gradually integrated into the adult curriculum, and soon a second child analytic seminar was conducted by John Francis and Betty Huse. In 1961 the Child Division was formally established, and the Child Committee was made a subcommittee under Education. Activities expanded, and from 1960 to 1964 Selma Fraiberg came to Baltimore every other week to teach child development and child analysis. Another significant boost to the program occurred when Marjorie Harley began commuting from New York to teach seminars in Baltimore. She moved there in 1966, and the program flourished under the joint direction of Harley in Baltimore and Francis in Washington. Today the Child Division is an integral part of Institute activities. Interest in child analysis continues to run high, and approximately one in four candidates in adult analysis is training concurrently in the child and adolescent program. Additionally, ten graduates of the adult program, one from the Cincinnatti Psychoanalytic Institute, are at present training in child analysis.
A significant expansion of activities and a wish to develop structures to promulgate the widest participation by members prompted the adoption in 1982 of new constitutions for both the Institute and the Society. All members of the Institute are now regularly reviewed for faculty and training analyst appointments, and are encouraged to participate in teaching as soon after graduation as possible. Certified members who have been graduates for at least five years are automatically reviewed for appointment as training analysts. To provide for full participation on all levels, two certified members of the Institute who are not training analysts serve elected and renewable two-year terms on the Education Committee. Training analysts are designated Emeritus at age 68 but, while they cannot take on new candidates, continue to serve on the Education Committee. Supervisory activity can extend to age 75. At present there are 14 training analysts, 11 training analysts emeriti, 18 supervising analysts, 4 child and adolescent analytic supervisors, 31 teaching analysts, and 34 associate teaching analysts. These figures include colleagues in Baltimore, Washington, and Miami.
For many years the Institute was involved in the CORST program for nonmedical professionals. At present two graduates of this program serve on the Education Committee, and others have held responsible positions in the
Institute and Society. When training for nonmedical clinicians was approved in The American, the Institute contributed usefully to procedures worked out by the national Committee on Nonmedical Training. With waivers no longer required, the local Selections Committee now considers nonmedical clinicians and psychiatrists according to the same procedure. Today nonmedical clinicians account for approximately 35% of the student body.
In 1987 commodious new headquarters for the Institute and Society were dedicated in Laurel, Maryland, an historic town about halfway between Baltimore and Washington, which are 45 miles apart. For a number of years, the idea had been debated, and naturally there was some reluctance to give up the Washington suite and, especially, the handsome Baltimore brownstone, located less than a block from the historic old Stafford, that for more than a quarter century had housed the Institute and Society. But the clear advantages of having a single administrative and teaching center, a large central library, and a site where all meetings could be attended in person by members from both cities eventually decided the issue. In that year also, the names of both Institute and Society were given their present form to reflect our location on the Baltimore-Washington corridor.
Finally, no history of the Baltimore-Washington Institute and Society would be complete without mention of its deep involvement over the years with The American Psychoanalytic Association. In addition to current contributors, outstanding names from the past include Lewis B. Hill, past Secretary and President; Leo H. Bartemeier, past Treasurer, Secretary, and President; A. Russell Anderson, past Secretary; Francis McLaughlin, past President and Chairman of the Board on Professional Standards; and Leon Ferber, past Chairman of the Committee on Institutes. This spring the Institute and Society proudly welcome colleagues from around the nation to Washington to The American's Annual Meeting.