The Greater Kansas City Psychoanalytic Society serves a metropolitan population of a million and a half, distributed among the two Kansas Cities (Missouri and Kansas) and their suburbs. Granted society status by The American only last year, the organization nevertheless has a long history as a Study Group, itself the culmination of long effort by an earlier generation of colleagues.
No one seems to know just who conducted the first psychoanalytic session in Kansas City, but two analysts—Sylvia Allen and George Harrington—are known to have practiced there before World War II, in a city which then had perhaps six to eight other psychiatrists and no psychoanalytic organization. Karl Menninger had considered practicing in Kansas City as early as the 1920s, and for a time spent one day a week in the office of local physician and writer Logan Clendening, whose book The Human Body was a model for Menninger's first popular success. The Human Mind. However, Menninger never established a regular psychiatric practice outside of Topeka, and it was Allen and Harrington who established the first analytic beachhead. They maintained membership in the Topeka Psychoanalytic Society, which had been established in 1938, and a few years after the war Allen became Kansas City's first training analyst, having been appointed to the post by the Topeka Institute.
In fact, it was the great postwar boom in psychiatric education in Topeka, sixty miles to the west, that propelled the growth of psychoanalysis in Kansas City. The Menninger School of Psychiatry had begun to turn out scores of graduates each year, all powerfully influenced by teachers like Karl and Will Menninger, David Rapaport, Roy Schafer, Merton Gill, Robert Knight, Margaret Brenman, and Philip Holzman. A substantial number of the early Topeka-trained psychiatrists went on to psychoanalytic training, and a number of them established practices in Kansas City. By the mid-1950s, the analysts practicing there included Topeka graduates Harold Meyers, Sigmund Gundle, and Gerald Ehrenreich (one of the first psychologists to complete analytic training in Topeka). In the next few years they were joined by Irving Kartus, former director of the C. F. Menninger Hospital, and by Ivy Bennett, an Australian psychologist trained at the Hampstead Clinic.
By this time there were also in the city a number of “fellow travelers” who had gained psychoanalytic sophistication through Menninger residencies, personal analyses, or partial training at the Topeka Institute; these early supporters of psychoanalysis included psychiatrists Victor Bikalis, George Collins, Lewis Forman, Morton Jacobs, William Robinson, and James Young, as well as psychologist Nathan Greenbaum.
During the 1950s the extended group began to establish a foothold for psychoanalysis in several local institutions, notably the two state medical schools and Menorah Hospital, which ran the city's first general hospital psychiatric service. Kartus and Gundle taught and supervised residents at the University of Kansas department of psychiatry for a number of years, until department politics and the rise of biological psychiatry led to the eclipse of the analytic point of view, which only recently was reversed.
At UMKC, the state medical school on the Missouri side, a more continuous analytic presence has been maintained, and analysts have long been valued teachers and administrators in the residency program and its affiliated hospital, the Western Missouri Mental Health Center (formerly Psychiatric Receiving Center). Their presence was in large part due to the influence of the late Charles Wilkinson, an African-American psychiatrist who directed residency training and served as associate dean at UMKC. Wilkinson was not himself an analyst, but he was a tireless advocate for dynamic psychiatry and its contributions to the care of all types of patient.
It was with Wilkinson's encouragement, and with the tangible support of a foundation he administered, that the Psychoanalytic Study Group of Kansas City was formed in 1965. The charter members were Bennett, Ehrenreich, Gundle, Kartus, and Meyers. They began to hold monthly scientific meeting and to sponsor yearly presentations by eminent psychoanalysts or writers on topics of psychoanalytic interest. This tradition continues, and the yearly programs, usually taking the form of daylong workshops, are eagerly awaited each spring by many in the local mental health community. In recent years featured speakers have included Michael Basch, Paul Dewald, Douglas Dietrich, Joseph Lichtenberg, Evelyne Albrecht Schwaber, and Lenore Terr.
The Study's Group's growth was slow but steady, drawing mainly on two sources: psychiatrists and psychologists trained at UMKC who have gone on to obtain analytic training at the Topeka Institute, and transplanted Topekans who came to Kansas City upon completing their training. Those in the former group have continued another tradition that began in the fifties, that of weekly (or even more frequent) round trips to Topeka for classes, supervision, and personal analysis.
For a period following the death of Sylvia Allen in 1958, there was no training analyst in Kansas City. Not until 1969, well after the Study Group was formed, were Kartus and Meyers appointed. The latter's untimely death in 1978 dealt a severe blow to the still small band of analysts and candidates in the city; however, several candidates who had begun analysis with Meyers were able to continue with Gundle, who was appointed training analyst at that time. In 1986, with the appointment of Salomon Alfie—analytically trained in Boston and practicing locally since 1972—Kansas City gained another training analyst. The very next year, Walter Ricci, a Topeka graduate, also was appointed. More recently, with the retirement of Kartus and Gundle, Jack Ross of Topeka assumed added responsibilities in Kansas City; a valued colleague was lost with his death in April of this year.
Besides the sheer growth in numbers, two developments in recent years have given added momentum to the Study Group's development toward society and institute status. First was the establishment in Kansas City of a psychoanalytic training program not affiliated with The American. That program's ability to attract candidates, and the positive experience of several Study Group members who teach there, is a source of encouragement. The second was a 1993 site visit by The American to the Topeka Institute, during which both site visitors and Topeka analysts actively endorsed the idea of an institute in Kansas City. Since then, the project has been taken up by several committees and task forces, and is nearing completion.
Besides Ricci, graduate analysts who have practiced in Kansas City throughout their training now include Samuel Ericsson and Beverley Wilson. Six candidates are at various stages of training. Among the emigrés from Topeka over the years have been Stephen Appelbaum and Francisco Gomez during the 1970s, Michael Harty and Frederick Mittleman in the early 1980s, and more recently Eric Kulick and Gordon Risk, as well as Jorge Gandolfo, a graduate from Buenos Aires. In all, the latest roster includes twenty-six analysts and candidates, all looking forward to the next milestone: the first class of candidates to be admitted to the new institute.
Michael K. Harty, Ph.D., has served two terms as president of the Psychoanalytic Study Group of Kansas City.