At the beginning of the 1940s, New Orleans was hundreds of miles from any psychoanalytic center. To the west was Los Angeles; to the north Chicago; to the northeast Washington-Baltimore. Psychoanalysis in the deep south began when Anna Colomb, a charter member of the Wishington-Baltimore Psychoanalytic society, established a practice in New Orleans in 1942. In 1945 Samuel Barkoff, a graduate of the Washington-Baltimore Psychoanalytic Institute, joined her. With the help of Ernest Hadley of Washington and Lewis Hill of Baltimore, they founded the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Study Group under the sponsorship of the Washington-Baltimore Institute. Informal teaching began in 1947, and by the fall of 1948 a first class of 13 formal candidates was assembled. The faculty was augmented by Theodore Watters from the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, who came home to New Orleans in 1947, and by visiting teachers: Russell Anderson, Therese Benedek, and Edith Weigert.
However, because Drs. Colomb and Barkoff were New Orleans's only training and supervising analysts, candidates had to commute on weekends to Washington for supervision and some of their didactic courses. Faculty from Washington traveled regularly to New Orleans. Henry Miles of New Orleans cites the special influence of three faculty commuters: Hadley, Rex Buxton of Washington, and Bertram Lewin of New York.
Edward Knight, a candidate at the time of the commuting to Washington, recalls his first flight north: “I joined Bob Gilliland at the airport at midnight in the winter rain. As we walked into the area approaching a DC-7 to climb aboard the stairs up into the plane, with umbrellas hovering about, Bob turned to me, briefcase in hand, and earnestly stated, ‘Let's face it, Knight, this is not neurotic.‘ ”
The candidates would arrive in Washington late Saturday morning and check into the Statler. The hotel room became a base of operations from which they would taxi off to visit their supervisors. Mid-afternoon of the same day, they would return to the National Airport for the flight back; often they were the only passengers on the plane. On more than one occasion, because of bad weather they were forced to land and spend a stormy Saturday evening reading magazines in a motel somewhere in Georgia or the Carolinas.
In 1949 Robert Heath, a candidate at the recently established Columbia Clinic for Psychoanalytic and Psychosomatic Training and Research, became Chairman of the new Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Tulane University School of Medicine. David Freedman, already a neurologist, became a member of the first class of residents in Heath's department. He recalls that he hoped to enter “a Brave New World in which psychoanalysis and the then already emerging new knowledge of the function of the nervous system would be reconciled.” This was not to be.
In the mid-fifties, the Psychiatry and Neurology Department at Tulane and the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Study Group became embroiled in the battles of ideology and personality then being fought among analysts in the Northeast. The struggle between the adherents of Sandor Rado, who had founded the psychoanalytic institute at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the American Psychoanalytic Association resulted in pressure on both faculty and candidates in New Orleans. The Tulane Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, without the approval of The American, established a program in psychoanalytic medicine associated with Columbia. Freedman committed himself to the New Orleans Study Group, but in doing so had to leave the Tulane faculty.
Eve Fortson commented that she was accepted into the New Orleans Study Group in her second year of residency at Tulane. When Heath learned of this, she received a letter terminating her residency. Fortunately, she was able to take her final year of training at Louisiana State University Medical School, with the approval of its chairman, Dr. Watkins.
When the Washington-Baltimore Institute split in 1952, the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute became New Orleans's sponsor. That year, Carl Adatto and Kenneth Beach, the first candidates to commute, became the first graduates. A third training and supervising analyst, Norman Rucker of Columbia, was appointed in 1953. This was a milestone year: the Study Group was designated a Training Center by The American, and the eight active members in New Orleans organized the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Society. In 1954 Adatto, Beach, and William Thompson, also a graduate of the New Orleans program, joined the faculty of the Training Center. In May of the following year, the Society was accepted as a Constituent Society of The American.
Barkoff's death in 1955 left New Orleans with only two training and supervising analysts. In 1957, however, four new training analysts were appointed: Adatto; Beach; Miles, a
graduate of the Boston Institute; and Irwin Marcus, who trained at Columbia. To the relief of candidates, there was now no need to travel to Washington. In May 1961 the program became fully accredited by The American. In 1972 Marcus organized a child-adolescent program, which achieved full approval by The American in 1975.
When Shervert Frazier became Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Baylor Medical School in the early 1960s, he brought Bob Gilliland onto the faculty with the goal of establishing a psychoanalytic institute in the Houston-Galveston area. Freedman joined him a year later, and together with Robert White, who was already on the faculty of the University of Texas in Galveston, they undertook to develop a training facility. In 1968, a Study Group was established under the sponsorship of the New Orleans Institute. Adatto and Thompson from New Orleans were deeply involved and made periodic visits.
In part because of concern about organizational problems like those then occurring at Western Reserve and Pittsburgh, the Houston-Galveston Institute was developed as an entity independent of the university. However, it enjoyed the support not only of Dr. Frazier but also of his successors, Alex Pokorny and Robert Williams.
As in the past, when New Orleans candidates flew to Washington for supervision, Houston-Galveston candidates flew to New Orleans. Alan Cooper was the first commuter, in 1968. Psychoanalytic training was then much in demand in the Houston-Galveston area, and at one time an entire candidate class at New Orleans was made up of commuters from Texas. William Schleuse, who commuted in 1970, considers it not such a terrible hardship, as the flights were relatively inexpensive and took only an hour. The stories told by his New Orleans teachers of their trips to Washington in the 1950s put the Gulf Coast commute into perspective.
The Houston-Galveston Study Group was approved as a provisional institute and then, in 1972, as an accredited institute. Since then it has developed a training program in child analysis. Recently it was the beneficiary of a substantial monetary gift, which it has used for a variety of important projects, including a newly established child development program.
In the early sixties, a strong feeling against The American was to be found among the analysts scattered through the Southwest. To counteract this and to persuade people to get together, Drs. White, Gilliland, and Gene Pumpain-Mindlin formed a “non-organization”: The Analysts of the Southwest. Members joined with the understanding that there would be no formal organization and no connection with The American. As the analytic community enlarged, attitudes changed, and in 1973 the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Society was organized. The following year it was accepted as an affiliate society of The American. The Society currently has an active and affiliate membership of 58.
Marion Richmond, currently a member of the New Orleans Society and a teaching analyst at the New Orleans Institute, was Dallas's first analyst. He subsequently moved to Washington, D.C., but shortly afterward, in 1961, Merland DeBolt and Fredrick Davis, graduates of the New Orleans Institute, moved to Dallas, where they were the most active among a growing group of analysts in keeping contact with the New Orleans analytic community.
As Houston-Galveston became independent of its New Orleans sponsorship, the Dallas Branch of the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Institute was being established. In 1971 Robert Long moved to Dallas from Boston, and in 1973 he was appointed Geographical Training and Supervising Analyst for the newly formed training facility. Tragically, Dr. Long died in 1975, leaving seven candidates without a training analyst. The faculty at New Orleans turned for advice during this crisis to James McLaughlin of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Institute, which had earlier lost four training analysts in a short period (two through death and two through relocation). New Orleans profited from the experience of Pittsburgh, where unfortunately most of the candidates affected never completed training, and was able to assist the Dallas candidates through this critical period. Six of the seven candidates graduated.
Like their Houston counterparts before them, candidates in Dallas had to commute to New Orleans. Denise Dorsey, who was a candidate in New Orleans at the time, feels that the commute may have enhanced their training. The candidates from Dallas and New Orleans held Friday evening dinner parties at the homes of the New Orleans candidates. Fond and special ties developed that continue to this day.
In 1977 Dr. DeBolt was appointed Geographic Training and Supervising Analyst, and the following year Kenneth Altschuler, a training analyst from the Columbia Institute, arrived in Dallas and was appointed Geographic Rule Training Analyst. Max Soll, who arrived from The Downstate Psychoanalytic Institute (now N.Y.U.) in 1978; Thomas Sonn, who arrived from the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute in 1979; Herbert Gomberg, a graduate from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, who arrived in 1983; and Rhoda Frenkel, a Dallas graduate who had commuted to New Orleans, all became Geographic Training and Supervising Analysts for New Orleans/Dallas, insuring the program's viability. The Dallas faculty, then, came from a number of different programs. This, and the fact that DeBolt, the senior member, had little interest in administration, perhaps contributed to a relatively slow pace of development. Eventually, however, the Dallas Branch developed into a fully functioning, autonomous organization, adopting its own curriculum and bylaws. In 1985 Dallas was approved as a provisional institute and three years later was fully accredited. The Dallas Psychoanalytic Society, accepted as an affiliate of The American in 1978, currently has an active and affiliate membership of 27.
Psychoanalysis in New Orleans, a small and not particularly affluent city, has grown slowly but over the years has flourished. The institute is approaching the half-century mark and has never experienced the organizational splits that have marred other institutes. The tumult between Rado and The American at the time of its founding may have provided an object lesson. Also, New Orleans had no charismatic leader (and actively sought not to develop one) and a shared foe in Dr. Heath. Terms of office in the institute were limited, and the Society, a separate organization, was not involved in the Institute's educational activity. Perhaps the founding of institutes in Houston-Galveston and Dallas served as a “split-equivalent.” Finally, the “heroic efforts” of the first faculty, both in New Orleans and Washington, and of the first candidates may have created a bond and a sense of specialness that have minimized any divisiveness.
At present the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Society has 54 members. As old contentions have faded, the New Orleans Institute has been active in continuing education programs at both L.S.U. Medical School and Tulane School of Medicine. More successful than its size might suggest, the Institute in 1990 was awarded, for its achievements in psychoanalytic education, the prestigious Mary S. Sigourney Award.
This article was based on the Oral History Workshop, “Psychoanalysis in New Orleans and the Adjacent Deep south,” held May 9, 1991, at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychosnelytic Association in New Orleans. Organizing and chairing the meeting was Eve Fortson. Henry H W Miles discussed the history of psychoanalysis in New Orleans (see TAP 25/2). Edward H. Knight spoke ofhis personal experience with psychoanalysis in New Orleans. David A. Freedman gavethe history of the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute, and Vann Spruiell discussed the development of psychoanalytic training in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area.