For many, psychoanalysis is a humanistic enterprise with little direct connection to computers. With their increasing infiltration into all aspects of life, however, computers have taken on a significant role in the operations of The American and in the professional lives of many of its members. A few, like the researchers Hartvig Dahl and Louis Gottschalk, have been using them for years.
Over the past few years the Central Office staff, under the direction of Helen Fischer, has gradually increased its use of computers. Although for at least a decade The Americans bookkeeping functions had been handled by an outside computer firm, the methods current ten years ago—the filling out of vouchers for each transaction and their transfer to a service bureau for keypunching and entry into a mainframe computer—had long been obsolete.
In the Central Office itself, staff members had access to computers, but there was virtually no integration of the functions they served. A typical use was word processing on stand-alone PCs. One computer contained a database of the American's membership, while another had a similar database that kept track of dues billed and received. These computers supplied data to the company that printed the membership directory and to the service bureau for running off mailing labels. All of these off-site operations entailed considerable processing fees. More important, a large amount of redundant work was being done, and still the Executive Committee found itself unable to obtain the timely financial statements needed for informed decision making.
To remedy this situation, President Bernard Pacella appointed an ad hoc committee, chaired jointly by Judith Schacter and Paul Mosher, to update the operation of the Central Office with an eye toward the twin goals of economy and improved efficiency. The committee began by surveying the Association's internal needs, and by investigating how comparable membership organizations handle similar tasks. All indications were that the organization's needs could be met by installation of an upgraded computer facility at the Central Office consisting of a Local Area Network (LAN) based on PCs, of the sort typically found in small law firms. This setup would make it possible to move in-house, at considerable saving, accounting functions and the printing of the membership directory and mailing labels. All computers in the office would be hooked together so that staff could share a database, communicate through an internal E-mail system, and have maintenance functions such as backups handled centrally. In addition, the membership database would be improved to contain such useful information about members as academic appointments, committee memberships, offices held, etc. With this information readily available, various efficiencies become possible, making it easier, for example, to ensure geographically balanced representation on The American's committees.
In December 1992 the Executive Council accepted the committee's recommendation and appropriated the funds to engage a consultant. At that point a fifteen-month plan was agreed to. It was a high priority that no interruption of the Central Office work flow would be occasioned by the changeover.
The consultant first prepared a description of the new system and distributed bid proposals to various hardware vendors. Bids were received in the spring of 1993, and the final hardware installation was completed in May. In that same month, the consultant began training the staff to take over the accounting functions, which in June were moved officially in-house.
Currently, work is progressing on the design of the new database. When it is complete, printing functions will also be moved in-house. Central office staff will have access to certain parts of the database directly from their desks, which wijl improve the efficiency of many tasks.
The LAN will also be accessible via telephone lines from remote sites anywhere in the country. After the initial fifteen-month phase, work can begin on making some of the facilities available to institutes and societies.
For example, it might be useful for an institute to keep its records on the Central Office main computer. Such an arrangement would have the advantage that the data would be regularly backed up and would be kept on a professionally supervised system. In addition, it might be possible to simplify the complicated reporting procedures currently required of institutes to keep the Central Office up to date. Obviously, issues involving confidentiality and administrative arrangements would first have to be resolved. A pilot project with a single interested institute would likely be the first step.
In 1985 George Klumpner proposed a discussion group for analysts interested in personal computers. Since then the group has met twice yearly at meetings of The American. Klumpner chaired for the first three years and was succeeded by Paul Mosher, who has recently been joined by co-chair Lee Brauer.
The group convenes on meeting Saturdays, at seven in the morning, and is attended by a growing number of interested members. Ten-minute presentations center on actual projects in which members are using personal computers in their professional work. Over the years, the discussion group has been a place where members who were considering buying a first computer could get advice from more experienced members, ask questions, and get some encouragement.
Personal computers have created an opportunity for individuals to experiment, right at their desks, with a number of new concepts in the natural sciences. Some of these concepts, which often come up in contemporary discussions of mind-body issues, are much easier to understand when they can be demonstrated experimentally. The group has had discussions of subjects like chaos theory, connectionism, neural nets, and artificial intelligence, all of which can be demonstrated with available software.
By far the most significant function of the discussion group is its having served as a place where several ongoing projects were launched or nurtured. In 1985 Stanley Goodman and Vann Spruiell organized a group of analysts who, working at home, divided among themselves the job of entering, in computer readable form, the contents pages of all major psychoanalytic journals. This project has come up for discussion at almost every meeting of the discussion group. Goodman has continually updated and expanded this index, which he distributes on floppy disks, at cost, under the name JOURLIT. It contains bibliographical data for over eight thousand articles going back as far as 1920. Because the entries can be searched on a personal computer, many colleagues have found the index a great aid in scholarly research and teaching activities. Also on disks, a list of five thousand book reviews published in the main psychoanalytic journals since 1920 is distributed by Spruiell under the name BOOKREV, also at cost. Over the last few years other colleagues have added to these reference listings by taking responsibility for entering the data for other journals and distributing the disks.
In 1987 Goodman and Mosher devised a way of making a printed version of the JOURLIT database, in a form that serves as a handy index to the literature. This 500-page publication, Title Key Word and Author Index to Psychoanalytic Journals, is published by The American and is now in its second edition (1920–1990).
At about the same time, Mosher began work on a computer program that would make possible a rapid and convenient search of the growing mass of JOURLIT data. Searches are possible based on title key words, author names, year of publication, etc., as well as various combinations of these. The program, called JOURLOOK, has been mailed to hundreds of analysts in over a dozen countries. This year a successor program, DUAL-LOOK, was completed which allows the computer
user to search the BOOKREV and JOURLIT files simultaneously. The program has many convenience features, such as rapid searching, sorting and printing of selected groups of references, and the ability to search for articles, book reviews, books, or any combination.
Several years of conversations at the Saturday morning discussion group have heightened the awareness of members regarding the potential of CD-ROM technology. These discs (the spelling “disk” is used for regular computer disks but, strangely, CD-ROMs are “discs”), the same size as the CDs used for music, can hold enormous amounts of text. At present a group led by Spruiell, under the auspices of the Committee on Scientific Activities and with funding from The American and a foundation, is at work devising a single CD-ROM disc containing the entire text of every article that has ever appeared in the major psychoanalytic journals. The disc can be read using a CD-ROM drive attached to a personal computer. If successful, the project will make it possible for analysts to have at their fingertips huge amounts of scholarly information. The periodic literature will be searchable then in ways never before possible.
Personal computers can also make communication between colleagues more convenient and efficient. Group discussion has led to the gradual adoption of CompuServe as a sort of common carrier for The American's electronic mail. Today a number of committee chairs and other members keep in regular contact in this way, while recently the Central Office has come on line so that messages and documents can be sent directly there in computer readable form.
Electronic mail has helped analysts avoid the frustrations of “telephone tag” while providing a permanent record of communications. It allows colleagues to be addressed in groups, which has led to ad hoc, committeelike working groups. Many analysts have collaborated on written pieces via the E-mail system, exchanging drafts of the work as additions, corrections, and revisions are made.
Approximately a year ago, Robert Galatzer-Levy, with the sponsorship of the Chicago Institute, began operation of a “psychoanalytic bulletin board” using the facilities of the CompuServe E-mail system. Twice weekly, messages posted for general distribution are sent out by Galatzer-Levy to interested analysts who have registered with him. Discussions have covered a wide range of subjects, from psychoanalytic practice issues to chaos theory. For those living outside of major metropolitan areas, the bulletin board is a welcome way to keep up with what colleagues are thinking.
Finally, partly as a result of those early Saturday morning discussions, the scientific programs of The American have become more hospitable to computer-related topics. Two years ago the group sponsored a one-time workshop intended to assist colleagues beginning with computers. Subsequently, discussion groups on topics of theoretical interest, such as neural networks and connectionism, have appeared on the meeting programs.
Title Key Word and Author Index to Psychoanalytic Journals (1920–1990, Paul W. Mosher, M.D., Editor: Contact the Central Office, CompuServe 71644,2164.
JOURLIT database: Contact Dr. Stanley Goodman, 3736 Highland Road, Lafayette, CA 94549; or via CompuServe 74640,3351.
BOOKREV database: Contact Dr. Vann Spruiell, 215 Iona Street, Metairie, LA 70055; or via CompuServe 76670, 1336.
DUALLOOK search program: Contact Dr. Paul W. Mosher at Crow Ridge Associates, Inc., P.O. Box 370, Voorheesville, NY 12186–0370; or via CompuServe 75675,1164.
Psychoanalytic BBS (virtual bulletin board): Contact Dr. Robert Galatzer-Levy, CompuServe 72255, 1164