The Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis was officially formed in 1949, relatively late in comparison with societies in other large eastern cities. However, its roots go back much farther.
In the early part of this century, psychoanalysis was rarely discussed by physicians in Philadelphia, and then largely with scornful dismissiveness. By the 1920s other professional groups, notably social workers, had developed a keen interest in psychoanalysis and its potential application to their work, and traveled both to New York and to Europe to learn about it. The leaders of Philadelphia psychiatry gradually came to realize that a controversial yet important mental health movement was afoot, and by 1932 the eminent psychiatrist Edward Strecker was moved to describe discussions of psychoanalysis within the “sacred precincts” of the Philadelphia College of Physicians as “heated,” “superheated,” and “violent.” Strecker himself was cautious in his appraisal of the new discipline. He approved of the value psychoanalysis placed on listening to the patient, and its attempt to explain mental symptoms rather than merely describe them in the Kraepelinian tradition.
At the same time, he expressed reservations that are often heard today: psychoanalysis was “cumbersome, lengthy and expensive”; it was difficult to evaluate; the element of “suggestion” within it could not be excluded; and a “suitable stopping point” was difficult to determine. Despite these doubts, he concluded that it would “survive in some form.. and become solidly incorporated into the body of psychotherapy.”
In the same 1932 issue of Transactions of the College of Physicians, Earl Bond, physician-in-chief
of the prestigious Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital, noted with dismay that patients seemed to be learning about psychoanalysis from radio, the stage, and popular books and magazines. (He, too, might have been speaking today.) Though not destined for analytic training himself, Bond was excited by the new therapy's potential and felt that the psychiatrists in his own hospital should be learning about it from a master. Accordingly, he invited Hermann Nunberg (trained by Bleuler, analyzed by Freud), to come from Vienna to live at the Institute for a year, to give lectures and seminars, and to conduct analyses of some of the psychiatrists there. Bond called it “an experiment in psychoanalysis” and with enthusiastic open-mindedness placed “analytic research alongside chemical and neural research, with which there is no conflict whatsoever.”
At about the same time, a small number of Philadelphia psychiatrists were already reading Freud's works, both independently and in small discussion groups. Among them were Sidney Biddle, O. Spurgeon English, and LeRoy Maeder. They traveled to Europe for their analyses (conducted by such luminaries as Hanns Sachs and Wilhelm Reich), and along with George Smeltz (who had trained earlier and came from Pittsburgh), they founded the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Society in 1937. Shortly afterward, this nucleus was rounded out by Gerald H. Pearson, who was to become an influential child analytic scholar, clinician, and teacher, and G. Henry Katz, a much-beloved and sought-after teacher. (Katz commuted to New York for analysis with Nunberg, who had by then settled there.) The Society formally became a constituent of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1939.
The Society's training of new analysts developed slowly at first, but teaching and outreach were pursued with great energy, if to a mixed reception. Analytic courses were offered in local psychiatric residencies, and the Extension Division truly extended: to Harrisburg, Wilkes-Barre, and Reading, all many miles from Philadelphia.
The pace of training picked up significantly after World War II, as a consequence of the exposure of many physicians to psychodynamic training in Army psychiatry, which had been strongly influenced by the teachings of William Menninger and Roy Grinker. Many who had been headed for other specialties now sought both psychiatric and psychoanalytic training, aided by financial support from the G.I. Bill. Psychoanalysis was becoming popular in many U.S. cities. Indeed, in Philadelphia it was reported that training “bottlenecks” had developed.
During the late 1940s a major controversy developed between key faculty members in the Society, ultimately leading to a painful split and the creation of a separate society and institute: the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis. Two of the Society's founders (Biddle and Smeltz) and about half the active training analysts joined the Association. Robert Waelder—for many years a leading analytic scholar and a valuable link to Freud—initially retained membership in both
groups before affiliating exclusively with the Association. Herbert Herskovitz also maintained dual membership for a time, before joining the Society exclusively.
Today, more than four decades after the fact, it is difficult to assess with any assuredness all the motives and issues involved in the schism. Writing in 1953, Sidney Biddle and Samuel Guttman of the Association cited “differences in ideology” concerning the relative therapeutic centrality of
transference interpretation. One would imagine that personality differences also played a major role. (Feelings are recalled by very senior analysts as having been passionate and bitter.) Another factor, more indirect, may well have been the very plethora of postwar trainees; in leaner times such a drastic split would seem an unaffordable luxury. Finally, from a broader perspective, the split can be viewed as but one relatively late battle in what the historian Nathan Hale has called the “American Psychoanalytic Civil War,” with major campaigns having been waged earlier in other institutes around such matters as orthodoxy vs. neo-Freudianism and lay vs. medical analysis.
As Henry Adams once said, “at best, the renewal of broken relations is a nervous matter.” While individual members of the Philadelphia Association and the Philadelphia Society have frequently maintained personal and professional friendships (often as an outgrowth of service on the same medical school faculties), formal discussions between the two groups did not take place until 1979, a full thirty years after the breakup. The process of rapprochement is reported to have involved some initial awkwardness and misunderstanding, but the two groups now cooperate in a variety of ways, in recognition of shared interests and concerns. For example, courses have been co-taught by faculty from both groups, advanced candidates may elect to take courses and receive supervision at both institutes, and liaison committees meet regularly. Joint scientific sessions are held annually and have been quite stimulating and collegial, as have the occasional combined social functions.
For a time the offices and classrooms of the Philadelphia Association were spread out over several hospitals, but in 1971 a move was made to the current headquarters, a spacious stone mansion in the lovely nearby suburb of Bala Cynwyd. Today the Association has 122 members in various categories, 7 of whom hold degrees at the Ph.D. level. Participation in the analytic training program is very broad: there are 21 training and supervising analysts; 27 additional full faculty members; and 12 associate faculty members. In addition, members of the Association are active teachers at every psychiatric training program in Philadelphia and in some graduate psychology programs as well. In recent years Association members have served as medical school / teaching hospital department chairs (Jefferson, Hahnemann, Einstein, Cooper), as directors of child psychiatry programs (Jefferson, Hahnemann), and as adult and child psychiatry residency directors (Jefferson, Hahnemann, Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital, Einstein). Jefferson, HUP, and Einstein all have sections on psychoanalysis with strong Association representation.
Members have been active in psychiatric and psychoanalytic organizations at the national level. An exhaustive list of leadership contributions would be much too cumbersome to include here, but a notable example is Homer Curtis, who from 1982 to 1985 chaired the Board on Professional Standards, and from 1988 to 1990 served as president of The American. Another distinguished recent contributor is Paul J. Fink, who served as president of the American Psychiatric Association from 1988 to 1989.
For thirty years the Association published the Journal of the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis. Originally the Bulletin, it enjoyed fairly wide circulation and contained a lively range of papers, including some clinical gems, written primarily by members. It was a wonderful stimulus to scholarly productivity. Early contributors included Muriel Gardiner (“Meetings with the Wolf Man,” “Feminine Masochism and Passivity”); Robert Waelder (“The Concept of an Instinct of Destruction”); and Eli Marcovitz (“A Note on the Development of Night Terrors in a Three-year-old Boy”). Sadly, the Journal ceased publication in 1981, primarily because of escalating costs.
Today Association members and candidates continue to engage in productive scholarship. Books on analytic topics have been authored or edited by Joseph Slap, Lester Luborsky, Caroline Koblenzer, Anita Schmuckler, Pirooz Sholevar, Helen Rosen, Harvey Schwartz, and Jacques Barber. Members who have published in major analytic journals include Jessica Byrne, Kenneth Cohen, Homer Curtis, Henry Eisner, Paul Fink, Elio Frattaroli, Abraham Freedman, Emanuel Garcia, Harold Kolansky, Frederic Levine, Franklin Maleson, Gerald Margolis, Sterrett Mayson, William Thomas Moore, Stephen Morgenstern, Stephen Risen, Bertram Ruttenberg, Stanley Shapiro, David Sachs, and Melvin Singer.
The Association maintains a lively and vital postgraduate scientific program for its members. Study groups are conducted each year on the psychoanalytic interpretation of art, of Shakespeare, and of English literature more generally, led by analytically informed guests from the academic community. Other regular study groups or scientific forums are devoted to a range of topics that shift in accordance with members' interests. In addition, visitors from other institutes who have made important contributions to analysis regularly deliver scientific papers, to both closed and open audiences, with Association members as discussants. In recent years guest faculty have included Charles Brenner, Jacob Arlow, Leonard Shengold, Edward Weinshel, William Grossman, Stanley Greenspan, Robert Michels, and Dale Boesky, to name but a few. Every other year the Association sponsors the Freud Memorial Lecture, in which distinguished scholars from related disciplines address a broader audience from the regional intellectual community. Recent Freud speakers have included Christopher Lasch, Stephen Jay Gould, Jerome Bruner, and Arthur Danto.
Intellectual and professional life are further enriched by an active outreach program. For many years the Extension Division (now called the Division of Applied Psychoanalytic Education) has offered a wide variety of well-attended non-certificate courses or workshops to mental health professionals and others in the community who seek to further their understanding and application of psychoanalytic ideas. (A 1982 book entitled Psychoanalytic Psychiatry for Lawyers, edited by Daniel Gesensway and containing contributions by many faculty members, is one outgrowth of these extension activities.) This year's course offerings include The Borderline Patient, The Disturbed Adolescent, The Psychotherapy of the Dying Patient, Male Psychology, and Applications of Psychoanalysis to Pediatrics. The Medical Education Liaison Committee offers additional courses on analytic principles of psychopathology and/or treatment, courses incorporated within the basic curricula of three area psychiatric residencies and the Widener University Psy.D. program.
Special note should be made of two new and very exciting outreach developments. The Center for Women's Studies, with seventeen faculty members, offers seminars or workshops on female psychology, women in literature, bulimia, women in therapy, and an extensive film discussion series entitled Women and Madness. The Association also offers a new, two-to-three-year Advanced Training Program in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. Sixty-two faculty members participate in extensive offerings of course work and individual supervision.
Currently forty-one candidates are registered in the Adult Division of the Association, and seventeen in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis. They are offered a curriculum organized around highly valued “classical” concepts in psychoanalysis, such as conflict and compromise
formation; the importance of transference and resistance interpretation; the centrality of the oedipus complex in neurosis; and the value of the dream in illuminating unconscious processes. The curriculum is constantly scrutinized and continually evolves, most recently in the direction of expanding the number of seminars on technique and other clinical (as opposed to theoretical) matters. Ample attention is given to current controversies in both theory and technique, and to “widening scope” issues, such as those concerning borderline and narcissistic pathology, trauma, and the importance of preoedipal/separation-individuation determinants in analyzability.
The Association's Division of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis was created in the early fifties, under the leadership of Gerald Pearson. It has long flourished, with as many as twenty-five candidates enrolled at one time. In earlier years, Berta Bornstein's bimonthly visits for extended supervisory gatherings were a particular highlight. Of the Association's current membership, twenty-nine are graduates of the Child Division, and nine are Child and Adolescent Supervising Analysts. The Division has had a strong influence in American psychoanalysis. The Handbook of Child Psychoanalysis, edited by Pearson with contributions from faculty members Harold Kolansky, William Thomas Moore, Elizabeth Kaplan, Marian Sprague, Herman Belmont, and Mitchell Dratman, was an important reference work for many years after its publication in 1968.
As in most institutes, it is sometimes difficult for candidates to obtain suitable cases, but seminar discussions are lively and well received, and the control case supervision is highly regarded. (The American's most recent site visitors regarded their observations of supervision to be “a key indicator of the quality of the analytic educational enterprise.” Discovering an unusual clustering at the positive end of the curve, they reported that “none of us have found such fine supervision on any other site visit.”
In general there has been a trend toward greater faculty openness with candidates, and greater inclusion in Institute and Association activities. For example, advanced candidates actively participate in professional school and extension school curricular planning, in the management of the Consultation Service, in the ethics discussion group, and as faculty in many of the major outreach functions. This participation has enhanced morale and contributed to a greater sense of collegiality in the Association.
The Philadelphia Association extends its warmest greetings to colleagues from around the nation who are visiting Philadelphia for The Americans annual meeting.
References available from the author upon request.