The Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute (LAPI) was founded in 1946. From the optimism and excitement of this beginning, to the immense popularity of its “golden age” in the 1950s and 1960s, to its intense political and theoretical struggles in the 1970s, and its resurrection in the 1980s, LAPI has always reflected the triumphs—and the problems—of psychoanalysis in America. As it now approaches its fiftieth anniversary, a review of its history might afford a better understanding of the conflicts that historically have plagued institutional psychoanalysis. Although Freud's dual instinct theory has been questioned and discarded by many American analysts, the forces of life and death have in the past played themselves out on the Los Angeles analytic scene, continue in the present, and show every sign of recurring. To paraphrase John Kennedy's famous Berlin speech, if anyone is interested in the history of psychoanalysis in America, let him come to Los Angeles.
The first fully trained psychoanalyst to come to Los Angeles was David Brunswick. Analyzed in Vienna by Freud himself, he is probably best known nationally as the brother-in-law of Ruth Mack Brunswick. David Brunswick arrived in Los Angeles in 1930, where he found that an informal psychoanalytic study group had existed since 1927. He became the leader of that group and was instrumental in inviting other European analysts to Los Angeles. Consulting with Franz Alexander in Chicago and Hanns Sachs in Boston, he invited Ernst Simmel to move to Los Angeles from Berlin in 1934. Then, in 1938, Simmel and Brunswick enticed one of the best known analysts of Europe, Otto Fenichel, to move to Southern California. The presence of Brunswick, Simmel, and Fenichel attracted other European-trained analysts to the area and legitimated the Los Angeles Study Group nationally. Initially under the jurisdiction of Chicago, the group was placed under the Topeka Institute upon its formation. Interestingly, both Simmel and Fenichel were charter members of that institute. Still later, in 1942, jurisdiction passed to San Francisco upon formation of the institute there, once again with Simmel and Fenichel as charter members. Clearly, the two were central figures in the formation of analytic institutes throughout the western United States.
Their presence was a magnet that drew people of talent to psychoanalyic training in Los Angeles. One of Fenichel's earliest American analysands was Ralph Greenson, later to play an important role both in Los Angeles and nationally. Analytic training in the late 1930s was informal and very exciting. Analysts, candidates, and interested people from various disciplines would meet together for seminars one evening per week, with Fenichel leading the group. There would be stimulating visits from other prominent analysts, such as Siegfried Bernfeld and Emanuel Windholz from San Francisco, Karl Menninger from Topeka, and Lionel Blitzsten from Chicago. Ralph Greenson would later remember Fenichel discussing Freud's Three Essays on Sexuality, sentence by sentence, for an entire year.
The first tragic event in the Los Angeles analytic community occurred in 1946, with Fenichel's sudden and unexpected death at the age of 48. Having decided that it would help the analytic community in Los Angeles if he obtained an American medical license, he had begun a medical internship, but in the middle of it he suffered a fatal cerebral aneurysm. His well-known book, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, was completed a scant two months before his death.
Despite this loss, a rush of analysts came to Los Angeles immediately after World War II, so that by 1946 there were enough fully trained analysts to form the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute. Besides Simmel and Greenson, other prominent analysts in Los Angeles included Frances Deri, Mae Romm, Ernst Lewy, Sam Futterman, Normam Levy, Frederick Hacker, Charles Tidd, Walter Briehl, and Lincoln Rahman. Once the Institute was recognized by The American, a further influx of analysts came to Los Angeles, including Leo Rangell, Judd Marmor, Carel Van Der Heide, Lawrence Friedman, Leonard Rosengarten, and Martin Grotjahn. Psychoanalysis suddenly became the new approach in psychiatry, and the Los Angeles Institute was the center of analytic studies in Southern California.
But then further unexpected events occurred. First, Simmel died in late 1947. His death, following so soon upon Fenichel's, threw the leadership of the Institute into the hands of younger analysts. Ernst Lewy, who had moved to Los Angeles from the Menninger Clinic, became the new dean. With this shift of power, tensions arose over such issues as lay analysis and innovations in technique, although many thought the main conflicts were personal. Eventually analysts split into two camps: Brunswick, Greenson, Lewy, Deri, and Tidd on one side, and Romm, Grotjahn, Levy, and Milton Miller on the other. By 1950 the two groups felt they could no longer work together, and the second group split off from the Los Angeles Institute to form the Institute for Psychoanalytic Medicine of Southern California (later changed to the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute). The popularity of psychoanalysis in Los Angeles was so substantial that both institutes grew and prospered, and their many graduates quickly developed full analytic practices. It was truly the “golden age” of psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. A prominent member of LAPI, Leo Rangell, was elected president of The American in 1961 and again in 1966, and from 1971 to 1975 served as President of the International Psychoanalytical Association. It was Rangell who in the latter capacity was instrumental in arranging the 1971 IPA meeting in Vienna, the first official return of psychoanalysis to its birthplace since Freud fled the city in 1938.
Like all golden ages, however, this one too came to an end. It is difficult to specify the exact date of the change, but by the mid-1960s a political bloc had developed in the Institute's Education Committee that prevented the appointment of any new training analysts. This bloc had two important consequences: first, a significant number of younger faculty members felt increasingly frustrated with LAPI; second, some of these younger members also became interested in British object relations and Kleinian theory as a way of treating patients more effectively.
Their discontent led eventually to the creation of a committee to study the problem. Chaired by Arthur Ourieff and Leonard Rosengarten, the committee met for two years and finally proposed radical administrative changes. As a result, a reorganization of the Institute and Society occurred in 1967. The Institute was placed administratively under the Society's democratically elected Board of Directors, to
insure the Training School's autonomy while preventing any recurrance of conflict on the smaller Education Committee. It was then that the organization became known as the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (LAPSI). At this time the membership also decided to grant faculty members automatic status as training and supervising analysts upon the completion of five years of service.
While these changes brought satisfaction to many members, LAPSI's struggles did not entirely abate. The group interested in British object relations and Kleinian theory became very popular with candidates but was strongly opposed by analysts with a more traditional orientation. A site visit by The American in 1973 found continuing dissatisfaction. The quality of analytic education began to be questioned, a lawsuit was threatened when the Institute tried to remove an instructor with Kleinian leanings, and rumors were current of possible disaccreditation by The American. There was even talk of another split in LAPSI, between traditional analysts and those interested in object relations and Kleinian theory.
In 1976 an Ad Hoc Committee to study LAPSI was established by The. American's Committee on Institutes. Chaired by Joan Fleming, it included Frances Gitelson, Maury Friend, James McLaughlin, Nathan Segal, and Stanley Weiss. At the same time a “middle group” emerged among LAPSI faculty, calling itself the Committee to Unify the Institute (CUI). Co-chaired by Mel Mandel and Leonard Rosengarten, its other members were Gerald Aronson, Neal Peterson, Robert Rodman, and Donald Siegel. Seymour Bird replaced Rodman when the latter left for Sweden to fulfill a teaching commitment. The two groups met together with all interested members and candidates. After numerous meetings between the Ad Hoc Committee, CUI, LAPSI leadership, and the leading Kleinians, LAPSI pulled back from the abyss of splits and disaccreditation. The procedure of automatically certifying senior faculty as training analysts was replaced by the present system of case presentation and evaluation. In addition, LAPSI revised its educational program to give candidates greater input on Institute committees. By 1980, at the next site visit by The American, the educational atmosphere was much improved and everyone felt greatly relieved.
Since then LAPSI has grown and prospered, and has continued to be open to new developments in psychoanalysis. While many of its analysts remained interested in object relations and Kleinian theory, others began in the late 1970s and early 1980s to become interested in self psychology. Some of those who earlier had found Kleinian ideas useful became leaders of this new trend. In 1979 Heinz Kohut was invited to Los Angeles to lead a conference on self psychology. Still other analysts became interested in integrating the new ideas with classical analysis. By the mid-1980s, LAPSI seemed fully on the road to recovery.
But once again new conflicts appeared. With the resolution of the psychologist-APsaA lawsuit, a group of Kleinian analysts, while remaining active in LAPSI, decided to form a new analytic institute, the Psychoanalytic Center of California, which obtained recognition from the IPA. In 1990 a second group of analysts, who felt The American was excessively rigid, formed the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, a free-standing institute without ties to any national or international group. These analysts were mainly from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute, but some members of LAPSI joined as well, again while continuing their membership and participation in LAPSI. It is interesting to note that this new Institute, drawing on LAPSI's history, decided to make its members training and supervising analysts automatically five years after graduation.
At present, then, there are four viable and active analytic institutes in Los Angeles, along with three others in no way associated—even informally, through dual membership—with The American. This has created a very challenging and stimulating atmosphere in Los Angeles, and there is active competition for candidates. The exact role of LAPSI in this current situation is at present unclear, but with its rich and colorful history it will once again find a way to grow and prosper.