This spring President-Elect Bernard L. Pacella succeeds George H. Allison as President of The American. Following is a brief account of his professional career to date.
Upon completion of a research fellowship and residency at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University, Pacella was asked to direct the Institute's child and adolescent service on a full-time basis while continuing his research in neurophysiology. While carrying the responsibility of running a combined inpatient/outpatient child and adolescent service, he also performed surgical procedures on the brains of monkeys and studied them clinically and neurologically. Recruiting Margaret Mahler to be a consultant to the children's service, where she chaired the weekly conferences, Pacella was deeply impressed by her clarity and precision in discussing symptoms and treatment. He was encouraged by Mahler to undertake training at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, which he did, despite the vigorous objections of his research chief, who was strongly opposed to psychoanalysis.
Graduating in adult psychoanalysis and, some years later, in child and adolescent psychoanalysis, he was eventually appointed to the child analysis faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. In the meantime he had discontinued his full-time work at the New York State Psychiatric Institute to assume the directorship of the child and adolescent psychiatry service at Roosevelt Hospital, where he remained for over fifteen years. Mahler was persuaded by Pacella to join him at Roosevelt, where she continued as consultant and co-chaired the conferences with him.
Pacella was probably the only candidate then in training at the New York Psychoanalytic who was engaged simultaneously in neuroscience research and full-time academic work. At his admissions interview he made it clear that he had no intention of doing analysis as a career; at that point he wanted training only to assist him in his research and to help him better understand patients. It took him a number of years to overcome attitudes instilled in him by his early academic and research experience. His child analytic work with Marianne Kris, his personal analysis, and his continuing friendship with Mahler in New York and her group in Philadelphia helped to involve him more directly in analytic work. With this came a greater involvement in the New York Institute and Society, where he was elected to the Society's Board of Directors and later became Treasurer and a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute. He was chair of a number of committees, in particular the Library Committee and Extension School Committee. In the early seventies, Kurt Eissler invited him to join the Board of Directors of the Freud Archives. It was about that time that he began a more intensive involvement in clinical psychoanalysis.
Appointed President of the Mahler Foundation, which position he held for many years, he became more closely associated with Selma Kramer and her associates in Philadelphia, in addition to collaborating with Harold Blum, Donald Meyers, Helen Meyers, John McDevitt, Annie Bergmann, and others in the activities of the Foundation and its Research Nursery at the New School for Social Research.
Pacella's first appointment in The American was to the Committee on Public Information, which he later chaired. A major turning point in his psychoanalytic career occurred when he was invited to join the Board of Directors of the Psychoanalytic Research and Development Fund, which had met regularly over the past twenty years. The board included Mortimer Ostow, Peter Neubauer, and Sidney Furst; the first discussion group he participated in, on topics dealing with early child development, included Phyllis Greenacre, Margaret Mahler, John McDevitt, Lou Sander, Peter Neubauer, Selma Kramer, and the other directors. At the American's annual meeting last year, Martin Bergmann referred in his plenary presentation to his participation in one of the Fund's recent discussion groups, citing with great feeling the profound influence these meetings exert on the psychoanalytic thinking of all involved, and the closeness, warmth, and respect they feel for one another.
As work on these committees brought Pacella into ever closer contact with the best of analytic thought, his immersion in clinical psychoanalysis steadily increased. Over ten years ago, he was elected Treasurer of The American and served for three terms before being nominated for President-Elect. Now, as he is about to begin his term as President, he plans to continue his predecessor's emphasis on issues of clinical practice. He plans also to strongly support the work of the committee to review the bylaws and procedural rules of The American, codifying them and proposing amendments where appropriate. A major concern, arising out of his eight years' experience on the Executive Committee, is to identify ambiguous or overlapping functions of that Executive Committee, the Board, and the Council, and to clarify their areas of responsibility. He strongly supported passage of the bylaw amendment abolishing associate membership and shares the views of George Allison and Marvin Margolis that committees of The American would benefit from greater geographical balance. A joint committee of Council and Board has already solicited the names of members interested in serving on Committees and will be consulted as appointments are made.
Other issues and programs that claim the incoming President's attention are relations with U.S. affiliate societies of the IPA that are not affiliates of The American; relations with the American Psychiatric Association and Division 39; increased Psychoanalytic Fellowships for psychiatric residents as a means of reversing the antianalytic trend in medical education; the creation of an external credentialing body; and, no doubt an outgrowth of his work with the Psychoanalytic Research and Development Fund, the financing of research, under the direction of Robert Wallerstein, regarding the applicability and efficacy of psychoanalytic treatment. The new President will discuss these questions at greater length in future issues of TAP, in addition to other issues of importance.
Pacella is certified by the Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in Psychiatry, Child Psychiatry, and Neurology; by the American Board of Clinical Neurophysiology in Electroencephalography and Evoked Potentials; and by the American Psychoanalytic Association in Adult Analysis and Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis.
For many years President of the Psychoanalytic Assistance Fund, which provided emergency aid to members or their families in financial distress and sent psychoanalytic literature to countries formerly “behind the Iron Curtain,” he influenced several benefactors to provide bequests and grants to The American. In addition, he influenced Mary S. Sigourney, benefactor of the Sigourney Award, to
place almost 3 million dollars in a charitable trust that should yield $100,000 annually to be awarded to major contributors to the field.
Pacella's interests include boating; he has owned a 42-foot powerboat equipped for long voyages and a 32-foot sailing sloop. He is also a collector of Freud letters, almost all of which he has donated to the Freud Archives for transmittal to the Library of Congress; he retains, however, a letter written by Freud totally in French, the only such letter known to be in existence. Pacella also has an important collection of American Indian artifacts and art, which occupies a room in his home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.
Some years ago, he was the recipient of one of Italy's highest civil decorations, the Cavalieri Ufficiale, partially for his discovery of important documents of Garibaldi which shed new light on the unification of Italy. Pacella presently holds the title of Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Columbia University.