An article by Melvin Mandel (TAP 25/2) purports to relate facts/details/conclusions as to a “Kleinian” Controversy at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (LAPSI) in the 1970s. The question is why this article, about a conflict long ago resolved to the satisfaction of LAPSI officials, including Mandel himself, appeared in your pages at all.
The full story is documented in a book I compiled over ten years ago: The Freud-Klein Controversy, 1973-77: Los Angeles, the Testing Ground and Final Solution. It is hard to believe that Mandel is now attempting to resurrect that ancient disputation. “One of the 1950s graduates of LAPSI,” he writes, “had discovered Melanie Klein, became enamored of her theory, and began an aggressive campaign to bring her discoveries to the attention of the locals. … The aggressive combatants insist on steering analyses, seminars, and supervision toward the new, ‘true’ theories.”
That “enamored” graduate was I, as many “locals” in our profession would know. I did consider Melanie Klein well worthy of study, for her profound simplicity and riveting insights. That is not my definition of “enamored,” but the purpose of this charged word was of course only to slur.
It is correct that in Los Angeles I was one of the first analysts interested in Melanie Klein, and it is true I was a graduate of LAPSI in the 1950s. I never knew I was a “combatant,” a “true [believer],” or “aggressive.” I was not in a position of authority at LAPSI, nor was I on any of the important training committees. I was but one training analyst among 55.
That I never “steered” anything anywhere at LAPSI, or had the ability to do so, is shown by another statement by Mandel: “Except for a few lectures, this campaign was conducted privately, outside the auspices of the Society and Institute.” Even if I were so powerful, still, by Mandel's own admission, the only result was “a few lectures” at LAPSI, and that is in reality an overstatement.
The essential truth is I was to teach a class at LAPSI—a continuous case conference—and was removed from teaching that class by the truly “aggressive” powers at LAPSI, who presumed then as now to assail me with the dismissive label “Kleinian” only because I and others sought new insights with which to reach and heal our tormented patients. This abrupt labeling had the effect of obscuring the failure of people in power (see Report of APsaA consequent to site visit February 14-17, 1973). The analytic charged-word approach would be to conclude: Incompetence endlessly works behind walls of projective protective labels.
The essential truth is that in the world of analysis of the 1970s, and certainly to date, there was indeed a vast discussion and “debate,” which I am certain Freud—and I am, above all, a devoted Freudian—would not call anything other than free speech in a free society of free professionals whose minds are not bound by “loyalty” to “institutions.”
“Once again,” writes Mandel, “psychoanalysts in Southern California are experiencing the agony of a split in institutional affiliation and loyalty. … The established power resists, and trouble begins. When words, negotiations, and diplomacy lead to stalemate, war begins. …” Certainly not at LAPSI, where the article proudly makes it clear there were only “a few lectures, … conducted privately, outside the auspices of the … Institute.”
There is not any “split” at LAPSI. None was ever permitted, except those “few lectures … conducted privately. …”
I know of no “war” except the one Mandel seems to want to start. I want only “peace”—which does include my right to utter or “babble” whatever kind of “nonsense” I want. In those “enamored” years, no one, and certainly not Mandel, discussed anything with me, or negotiated anything with me. I was avoided as if I had leprosy. I have been isolated at LAPSI by a concurrence of contempt, though I remain a member. Few at LAPSI wanted this allegedly dreadful “Kleinian” virus even discussed; or, if there were those who did, societal strictures kept them essentially silent.
I had thought that an individual had a right to think for oneself without being discriminated against. I was wrong. LAPSI was not a place where different ideas could be taught: “Except for a few lectures, this campaign was conducted privately, outside the auspices of the Society and Institute.” The suggestion seems to be that these meetings were held secretly by a group of subversives. The fact is, the entire analytic community was invited to all of the meetings where eminent Kleinians were presented as stated in my “History of Object Relations in Los Angeles.” Guest speakers included Herbert Rosenfeld, Hannah Segal, Wilfred Bion, Donald Meltzer, and Betty Joseph.
We in Los Angeles had company elsewhere, also searching. Basch, of Chicago, writes, in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis (Vol. 72, 1991), for the Buenos Aires Congress: “as students of the Fifties, we were in the untenable position of being taught a theory and a method that proved to be frustrating for us and disappointing to the majority of patients who sought our help.” This is a euphemistic way of saying that “institutional” psychoanalysis was blocking the grand fluidity of Freud's dynamic penetration—and, more to the point—that the institutionalists were failing where it counts most, with patients. In Chicago, Kohut also came along and provided relief to a beleaguered profession.
Just so. In Los Angeles, Melanie Klein's work came to the attention of a group of analysts who were feeling the same frustration. It is correct that a small group effort was indeed made in the 1970s to bring leading Kleinians over from Europe to teach. Their method could deal with pregenital and preoedipal conflicts without parameters—still hewing to strict analytic technique. In the beginning I personally overtook to invite Wilfred Bion to Los Angeles to work and teach.
We never considered ourselves “true believers.” We were, however, truly frustrated with institutional thinking—and certainly with LAPSI, which now has an average of about five graduates a year—in a vast community where so many desperately need our help. The fact is we were not dissidents, nor were we properly to be labeled as anything other than troubled searchers. A most complicated subject of the human spirit (psychoanalysis) was having to work out, in its very first century, problems of major consequence, as could only be expected. But we were prevented in Los Angeles from the normal expression of thought. The essential fatigue discussed by Mandel is the classic fatigue that results from denial. Our interest was simply in renewing the spirit of discovery.
Anyone who walks physically through the building owned (in trust) by LAPSI and sees its carefully tended retreat will conclude that neither I, nor anyone, let alone the simple precepts of Melanie Klein, has ever been permitted to disturb its tranquil acceptance that all there is to be learned about analysis has already been learned.
We (there are many of us now) do consider ourselves basically analysts who incorporate, when relevant, concepts originated by Melanie Klein, and other new thinkers, modified by a now vast collective experience with patients. When we get together, we welcome all dissenters. We do believe that Mrs. Klein's work is alive, well, and being validated (in our patients) by positive results. We are clear that in time thoughtful new assaults will better our always tentative evaluations—except the one awed evaluation that will never change: to honor the best writer of us all, the master originator, Freud.
Bernard W. Bail, M.D.
Los Angeles, Ca.