In the Columbia Center's second twenty years, the direct influence of its founders diminished, although intellectual derivatives of the earlier period remain abundant. This was a time for consolidation, in which Columbia began to reach out to establish closer ties with the larger psychoanalytic community. During this period the Center strived to establish itself as a mainstream institute, encouraging the development of current psychoanalytic perspectives, with an emphasis on metapsychology. At the same time, the research fervor in psychoanalysis had ebbed throughout the country, and Columbia was affected as well. That is not to say that no projects were conducted during this time, but only that they were diminished in scope and importance for the majority of the faculty. To a significant degree this was the result of a drying up of funding sources, as well as a lack of ideas about how to apply a more modern scientific methodology to analytic research. To this may be added an attitude, still prevalent in psychoanalysis, that research in this area is impossible because any attempt to study an ongoing analysis would destroy it. Although a few Columbia candidates chose full-time careers in research, nationally an attitude persisted that research interests are a resistance to analysis that must be analyzed and understood. Nevertheless, Columbia, maintaining its long tradition of intellectual freedom, encouraged theoretical pluralism.
This was an important time for other reasons as well. The quality of candidates during this period was extremely high, and many significant analytic careers were initiated. Several important analysts were attracted from other institutes and became major contributors. During these years Columbia sponsored the development of a new psychoanalytic institute at Emory University (see the accompanying article by Ralph Roughton), inaugurated a child analytic program, and launched a number of graduates on full-time academic or research careers.
George Goldman continued as director until 1971. An important aspect of the Goldman years was a strengthening of the Center's academic program. This included the initiation of a biannual faculty retreat. For the first few years, these weekend meetings were held at the Sterling Forest Garden Conference Center, but they were soon moved to Columbia University's Arden House, a mountaintop estate once owned by the Harriman family. Here the faculty has been able to hold plenary group presentations followed by small-group discussions in a comfortable, informal setting. The retreats have not only been intellectually stimulating; they have also fostered social relationships among the faculty. They are particularly useful in the socialization process for new faculty members, whether Columbia graduates or analysts from other institutes.
Another example of the broadening academic environment is the establishment in 1966 of a visiting professorship in the name of Joseph B. Turner. It was the Center's good fortune to arrange a year of collaborative study with Joseph Sandler, the first Turner professor, that marked the beginning
of a productive relationship of long standing. Subsequent Turner professors were Jacob Arlow, Arthur Valenstein, Leo Stone, Peter Knapp, and Leo Rangell.
During these years a number of young graduates were added to the fatuity and have since joined the ranks of leading contributors to the psychoanalytic and psychiatric literature. In 1967 a child study group set the stage for the development of a child analytic program a few years later. The concept of psychosomatic medicine waned as attempts to correlate specific psychodynamic constellations with specific “psychosomatic” disorders failed. Consultation liaison services replaced this older concept, and Donald Kornfeld and eight other graduates of the Center remain involved. Important research has been done on Type A personalities, body image disturbances, and psychological reactions to physical illness and cardiac surgery. Three of the Kornfeld group have actively maintained their identities as analysts teaching at the Center.
In 1971 Aaron Karush became the Center's fifth director, serving until 1976. He was the first director to be chosen by a search committee, which was appointed by Lawrence C. Kolb, chair of the Columbia department of psychiatry, in consultation with outgoing director George Goldman. Karush, who had served as assistant director under Goldman, was concerned that Columbia analysts were having difficulty being published in the psychoanalytic journals and in participating in meetings and committees of The American. He systematically set out to change this.
The curriculum received a major overhaul under the guidance of Helen Meyers and was restructured around a core of didactic seminars and clinical conferences. The reparative psychotherapy service ended, in part because applicants were now receiving much better supervision in analytically oriented psychotherapy during their residencies. Psychoanalytic training was time-consuming, and candidates were eager to pare it down without stinting on the basics. Electives were started in the second year, and many new teachers were found among the Center's recent graduates. Graduation now required one terminated case and a third case showing engagement in a psychoanalytic process.
1973 was an important year at Columbia, as Otto and Paulina Kernberg arrived in New York from the Menninger Institute in Topeka. Otto Kernberg made Columbia the site for his further development of object relations theory. While at Topeka, he had worked with Robert Wallerstein on the only major prospective psychoanalytic outcome study. His research activity has continued, and it is fair to say that it is chiefly his influence, not only through his prolific writings but in his vigorous participation in teaching and administration, that has popularized object relations theory, Kleinian theory, and the British school at the Center. He selected Columbia for his psychoanalytic affiliation because he shared the view of its founders that the university setting provides the best milieu in which to develop psychoanalysis. He was also impressed with Columbia's open-minded
attitude toward the exploration of various frames of reference.
The other major event of 1973 was the formation of the child analytic program. Developed with the support of Kolb and the executive committee, it was organized through the strenuous efforts of Donald Meyers, with the assistance of Peter Neubauer and Selma Kramer. A new child and adolescent training program led to another major infusion of new ideas. Margaret Mahler came to Columbia to teach and supervise, along with Grace Abate, Peter Blos, Eleanor Galenson, Paulina Kernberg, Marianne Kris, John McDevitt, Charles Sarnoff, Annemarie Weil, and later Bernard Pacella. The resulting developmental approach had a significant influence throughout the curriculum, where it became part of such core courses as psychopathology and basic concepts.
Another important event occurred in 1974, when Columbia graduate Robert Michels was appointed chair of the psychiatry department at Cornell University Medical School-New York Hospital. He brought with him fellow Columbia faculty members Arnold Cooper as vice-chair for education, Milton Viederman as director of the Consultation Liaison Service, and Jesse Schomer as chief of outpatient psychiatry at the Westchester Division of New York Hospital. The very next year, Michels brought in Otto Kernberg to head the Westchester Division. Michels and Cooper quickly established a strong medical student program, as well as one of the country's leading psychodynamically oriented residency training programs. They hired a number of Columbia graduates for full-time academic and research positions. As the Cornell department prospered, so did psychoanalysis at the Center. Many of the Cornell-trained residency graduates came to Columbia for psychoanalytic training while teaching at Cornell.
Another major intellectual event occurred in 1976, when Roy Schafer moved to New York and joined the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center and the Cornell Department of Psychiatry. His work on internalization, empathy, and female psychology was already quite influential at Columbia. His concept of the patient as agent, his demystification of metapsychology, and his view of the analytic history as a narrative built up between analyst and patient were subsequently to become quite popular. He, like the Kernbergs, had been attracted by the strong faculty and the intellectual pluralism at Columbia, and by the opportunities provided through university affiliation.
In 1976 John J. Weber became Columbia's sixth director, and in 1978 Edward Sachar succeeded Kolb as chair of the department of psychiatry. Sachar brought in many new faculty members, with a particular emphasis on biological research. No one knows what his impact on the Center would have been, because he was incapacitated by a stroke after a very few years.
Weber continued his outcome studies and published several papers still cited today. One of Weber's major accomplishments was to arrange for the Psychoanalytic Clinic to become a University Center. This organizational change, which occasioned the change of name, gave the Center special interdepartmental status within the university and made its director responsible directly to the dean and vice-president for health sciences, in addition to the chair of the department of psychiatry. Helen Meyers was appointed associate director of the Center, and she, Fred Lane, and Ethel Person all moved into positions of increasing academic responsibility. Meyers played a major role in curriculum design under three directors.
The appointment of Arnold Cooper to chair The American's Program Committee during the mid-seventies set the stage for his selection as president-elect in 1979. He served as president of The American from 1980 to 1982.
In 1981 Ethel Person was named director of the Center and served two five-year terms lasting until 1991. In addition to being the first woman director, she was also the youngest director to date. Her emphasis was on innovation, intellectual creativity, and broadening the Centers scholarly focus. Together with Weber, Person established a Columbia supporting trust organization called 'The Friends,“ which was chaired by Weber for the time Person was director. During that period, the Center's tuition was delinked from medical school tuition and reduced in order to ease the financial burden on candidates.
In 1984 Herbert Schlesinger moved to New York and established his analytic affiliation at Columbia. He brought with him vast experience in research, clinical work, and administration.
The past decade comprises the latter years of Ethel Person's tenure (1985–1991) and three years under Roger MacKinnon, the current director (1991–1994). Person guided the Center through the national lawsuit, at the end of which the court reaffirmed a university's right to define its own criteria for admission. Person also reacquainted the Center with its roots, so that the founders' names would have meaning to today's candidates. She broadened the base of the Center's executive committee and other key bodies, and expanded and rotated committee assignments to involve more of the faculty. In addition, the selection of training analysts was democratized, and committee work came under regular review by the executive committee. Person's interest in broadening the Center's intellectual life led to a series of interdisciplinary colloquia that resulted in the publication of three excellent books: Passionate Attachments: Thinking about Love (Free Press, 1988), edited by Gaylin and Person; Psychoanalysis: Toward the Second Century (Yale, 1989), edited by Cooper, Otto Kernberg, and Person; and Rage, Power and Aggression (Yale, 1993), edited by Glick and Roose.
MacKinnon began his tenure in 1991 as the first full-time director, an arrangement that has made the job both easier and more complex. A current emphasis is to reestablish research as a major mission of the Center. Many feel that unless the means is found to do prospective psychoanalytic outcome studies, the field is in serious trouble. A blue-ribbon research advisory panel, chaired by Steven Roose, has been appointed and has conferred with researchers in the department of psychiatry for help with scientific methodology and practical guidance in developing reliable and valid instruments. Through these efforts and the supportive attitude of the department of psychiatry, the Center has received its first six-year research fellow and a second part-time fellow. At present a feasibility study is under way, with the support of the executive committee, the faculty, training analysts, and candidates, to look into the possibility of conducting a prospective long-term outcome study.
Extra efforts have been made of late to recruit strong candidates from the several fine residency programs in New York, and several world-renowned analysts have joined the Columbia faculty from other institutes. An active candidate organization with good morale has been established, and the Center has concentrated on demystifying psychoanalytic training and democratizing relations with candidates and among the faculty. Younger members have been
given opportunities for personal development, including service on the executive committee. In addition, two awards for teachers have been established, one for teaching psychodynamic concepts to medical students, the other for teaching candidates. The message is clear: the two are equally important.
Another important initiative has been the raising of substantial funds for Rodman Gilder scholarships, allowing three candidates to enroll who otherwise could not have afforded training. Today's medical graduates, who have enormous debts and have often delayed their child rearing, are not helped by additional loan funds. To further alleviate this problem, training analysts at the Center have agreed to share the burden by sharply reducing their fees.
In summary, the transitions of the second twenty years have been gradual but profound. Columbia has struggled to overcome its earlier label as a dissident institute and in the process has become a mature institute with, to quote its most recent site visitors, “a deep bench of highly talented and creative teachers and an outstanding and relatively large candidate body.” Karush's objective has been achieved in that Columbia faculty members today present a representative number of papers at scientific meetings of The American, serve on major editorial boards, and publish numerous scholarly papers in psychoanalytic journals.
Today the Center is busy restoring the prominent focus on research that its founders believed was crucial. Candidates are encouraged to immerse themselves in training and to graduate within six years. Adherence to this schedule encourages applicants, who are better able to predict and allocate the time required for their formal training. Many faculty members continue to teach actively at the downtown campus, and the full-time faculties of two great departments of psychiatry—Columbia and Cornell—are thoroughly infiltrated with Columbia-trained analysts and candidates. The atmosphere of intellectual pluralism and creativity at Columbia has attracted eighteen analysts from other institutes, many of whom have been very active in the teaching and leadership of the Center, and have brought in new ideas. The Arden House Retreats and the Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine's RAPS seminar groups have both been important in maintaining this air of intellectual ferment. As a result, Columbia faculty have contributed a great many scientific papers and books, on a wide variety of topics, to the psychoanalytic, psychiatric, and psychological literature.
Columbia's graduates and faculty include in their numbers four directors of psychoanalytic institutes other than Columbia, sixteen chairs of psychiatry departments, two medical school deans and two associate deans, two directors of NIMH, two New York State Commissioners of Mental Hygiene and one Deputy Commissioner, three directors of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, three presidents of The American, five
presidents of the American Psychiatric Association, four presidents of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, two vice-presidents of the International Psychoanalytical Association, one secretary of The American, two presidents of the Academy of Psychoanalysis, the chair of DSM-III and DSM-IV, and several world-class researchers. Columbia faculty members are currently running for president and vice-president of the IPA and for vice-president of the American Psychiatric Association.
In addition, the Centers outstanding young faculty contains many future leaders in the field, and Columbia graduates, who now number over 360, include many active leaders of local analytic societies, solid psychoanalytic practitioners, and professors of psychiatry. It is impossible to give all of these contributors the credit they deserve, but, all in all, the Columbia Center boasts an impressive record of which it is justifiably proud.