The Fund for Psychoanalytic Research supports promising basic and clinical research relevant to both theory and clinical practice. The major concern of its Board of Directors, a diverse body of psychoanalysts experienced in both research and clinical work, is the excellence of a given proposal: its clarity of thought, coherence, feasibility, methods, overall scholarship, and links with ongoing or future programs of inquiry. Consequently, proposals that are funded range widely in domain and method. Consistent with this perspective, the Fund sets no unyielding criteria as to the applicant's level of training or institutional sponsorship.
Since 1987, the Fund has made 21 grants totaling $294,647. Successful proposals have come from clinical psychoanalysts, developmental psychologists, and psychotherapy researchers. The excellence and excitement of the fine work supported by the Fund is typified by these outstanding projects:
Psychodynamic Study of Panic Disorder Patients: Defense Mechanisms. This proposal set out to differentiate the defense patterns of patients with panic disorder from those of obsessional patients and of a normal control group. Modest and thoughtful, the proposal made it clear that the research was but the first of a series of studies into the psychodynamic aspects of panic disorder, relying on the descriptive studies already in place at the Payne-Whitney outpatient clinic. Great promise was seen in the proposed research with respect to the systematic study of important psychoanalytic constructs, and in its careful consideration of links to diagnoses and diagnostic phenomena important in the broader world of psychiatry.
Structured DSM-III Assessment of Psychoanalytic Control Patients. This proposal, an extension of a study begun in 1987, was to prospectively establish DSM-III diagnoses in 100 sequential patients applying for psychoanalytic treatment at the Columbia Psychoanalytic Institute. The overall goal was to compare two different personality disorder research inventories administered by trained psychiatrists. Other aspects of the original proposal were to study relations between DSM-III personality disorder diagnoses and clinical psychoanalytic diagnoses, as well as dynamic narrative formulations. In addition, the investigators planned to consider relations between the research diagnoses and the acceptance or rejection of prospective patients as appropriate for psychoanalytic treatment. Yet another aim was to trace the course of psychoanalytic treatment with respect to these systematically assessed personality disorder diagnoses. Data collection was already completed for 75 cases, and the new request was for limited funds to support additional research interviews, coding of the psychoanalytic data, and statistical consultation. The proposal was enthusiastically approved, in light of its potential for systematic exploration of relations between psychoanalytic phenomena and observations based on the major axes of descriptive psychiatry, such as personality diagnoses.
Reliability Study for Scales of Psychological Capacities. This project focused on determining the inter-rater reliability of a promising new set of scales, “The Scales for Psychological Capacities.” To be applied in clinical and semi-structured interviews, these scales were developed by the applicant and his research team to measure change, manifest in varying forms in the course of intensive psychoanalytic therapies and psychoanalyses, in what they deem to be stable underlying aspects of human functioning. A content validity study was carried out prior to the application, using the responses of 56 psychoanalytic researchers and clinicians. In progress were interviews with 25 nonpsychotic patients being studied by the investigators using these new scales.
The Phenomenology of the Third Year: An Empirical Investigation of the Psychoanalytic Inference Process. This proposal requested funds to complete an ongoing study. Much impressive work had been accomplished by the investigator on this project, who studied, through special interviews and other assessments, aspects of clinical thinking engaged in by 36 experienced psychoanalysts and 37 psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists. Careful coding manuals for examining these interviews had already been developed. The funds awarded were to be used to complete the coding and analyses of data already collected by this very energetic and resourceful investigator.
Do Early Vocal Dialogues between Infants and Depressed Mothers Predict Infant Attachment? This proposal came from a team of investigators with experience in the study of mother-infant communication. In work leading up to this proposal, the investigators studied 100 first-born normal infants at six weeks, four months, and one year of age, finding social communication in infancy to be predictive of optimal functioning and outcome on measures of attachment, as well as of temperamental difficulty at one year. Most impressive was a measure of communication involving an automated procedure that records and later analyzes vocal time patterns from each partner: “coordinated interpersonal timing.” The investigators planned to extend their work by looking at depressed mothers and their infants. A number of complex hypotheses were to be studied using these methods together with sequence analyses. One reviewer observed that “this is a beautifully rationalized proposal, with respect to its compelling logic and opportunities for discovery, as well as its basis in the previous work of others and the applicant group. In addition, the work is theoretically significant for psychoanalysis, and the authors had previously bridged their work to psychoanalytic theory.”
Culture and Infancy in the Nso Chiefdom of Cameroon: A Longitudinal Psychoanalytic Study. This project was submitted by a psychoanalytically oriented pediatrician now completing her doctorate in anthropology and planning to begin training as a research psychoanalyst. Her specific focus in the Nso Chiefdom was to be on the infants' and children's willfulness and frustrations. The infant subjects were to be studied from the first year of life and reassessed at two, four, and eight years. The culture being examined was of special interest to the investigator because in it major caretaking responsibilities are given to very young children, infants being turned over to four-and five-year-olds as mothers return to work in the fields. The investigator demonstrated wide knowledge of the relevant theoretical and infant research literature within psychoanalysis, as well as anthropological sophistication. One of the reviewers was especially impressed by the investigator's discussion of possible contributions the project might make to psychoanalytic theories of personality development.
The array of topics, methods, and investigator backgrounds seen here is typical of the projects the Fund supports and should dispel any impression that its grants go only to “quantitative research.”
The Fund's relatively modest grants have gone a long way, resulting over the years in numerous books and published papers. Several investigators have gone on to receive NIMH and other major funding based on early work underwritten by the Fund. Thus, it may be seen how voluntary contributions from members can be leveraged into the promotion of excellent research on the national and
international scene. Nor are the grants any longer quite so modest. Two years ago, in light of the increasing costs of conducting empirical research, the maximum amount for awards was revised upward. It is now possible to request up to $20,000 per year for a two-year period, with one or two competing renewals possible.
As part of its educational mission, the Fund last year instituted a yearly workshop, “From Clinical Curiosity to Funded Research,” to be held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting. All members interested in learning about research, or contemplating projects of their own, are encouraged to attend.