Certainly the first psychoanalyst with roots in Nashville (though later he settled and practiced in New York) was Smiley Blanton. He was one of a small band of adventurous young Americans who, in the 1920s and 1930s, went to Vienna to be analyzed by Freud. As others did also, he wrote an account of his analytic experience, Diary of My Analysis with Sigmund Freud, which was published posthumously. Influenced by a strict Presbyterian upbringing, he sought to blend psychoanalysis with religion and wrote several books for the lay public (two in collaboration with the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale), which were inspirational and exhortative. He was a man of broad interests and positive views, as his books (e.g., The Healing Power of Poetry) reflect. He was a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Society.
The beginnings of psychoanalysis in Nashville are closely connected with Vanderbilt University. They go back to 1961, when William F. Orr, a psychodynamically oriented psychiatrist and the chair of the department of psychiatry, invited Margaret Evans, a Kleinian lay analyst from London, to join the child psychiatry faculty. She taught psychoanalytic theory and psychotherapy to psychiatric residents and interested members of the staff. Although her practice of analysis in Nashville was not extensive, and her theoretical views were outside the ego-psychological mainstream then dominant in U.S. psychoanalysis, she did speak with conviction about the importance of psychodynamics and managed to acquaint a number of people with basic psychoanalytic concepts. Another analyst during this early period was Joseph Weinreb, who established a psychoanalytic practice and was for a time chief of child psychiatry at Vanderbilt. However, he retired in the mid-1970s and left Nashville.
The next phase in the development of psychoanalysis in Nashville began in 1970, when Marc Hollender succeeded Orr as chair of the department of psychiatry. In addition to having a distinguished psychiatric career, Hollender was a psychoanalyst and a member of The American. He sought to give the department at Vanderbilt a broad psychosomatic and psychoanalytic orientation. This he accomplished by attracting several academically qualified analysts, including Harry Abram, Henry Coppolillo, and Pietro Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Abram, from the University of Virginia, became professor and chief of liaison psychiatry, his principal interest. Coppolillo, from the University of Michigan, became professor and chief of child psychiatry. Regrettably, after a few short years, Abram died unexpectedly and Coppolillo left Nashville for Denver. Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who was appointed to the James G. Blakemore chair of psychiatry in 1975, had been professor of psychiatry at UCLA and chair of the department of psychiatry at Harbor General Hospital in Los Angeles. A few years later, James L. Nash, a member of the North Carolina Psychoanalytic Society, also joined the department at Vanderbilt, as director of the outpatient clinic; more recently he became director of residency training.
In short, all the analysts who came to Nashville during this period did so to fill positions at Vanderbilt. The Blakemore professorship played a particularly important role in the development of the psychoanalytic program. It made it possible for Castelnuovo-Tedesco to continue his research in the area of psychosomatic medicine and, increasingly, to devote himself to the practice and teaching of psychoanalysis. He was convinced that to establish a vital psychoanalytic presence in Nashville it would be necessary to create an opportunity for training through a connection with a psychoanalytic institute. Accordingly, in 1975 he became a member of the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Society/Institute, and in 1977 he was appointed a geographic rule training and supervising analyst. Castelnuovo-Tedesco is also active in The American, where he has served on several committees and chairs a discussion group (Psychoanalytic Considerations about Patients with Organic Illness or Physical Handicaps), which has met regularly for over twenty years.
In St. Louis, Paul Dewald, then director of the institute, and other training analysts—Alex Kaplan, William Kelly, Robert Meyers, Jule Miller, Stephen Post, Nathan Simon, and Eugene Trunnell—were strongly supportive of plans to extend training opportunities to Nashville, and before long training was under way. Over the next two decades a number of candidates from Nashville participated in the St. Louis program, traveling back and forth between the two cities. The group has included Sarah Aylor, Sarah Campbell, Thomas Campbell, Volney Gay, William Kenner, Sandra Leavell, Aileen McAlister, and Judith Regan, all of whom had been associated with Vanderbilt at one time or another, either as trainees in psychiatry or psychology or as members of the faculty. In addition, a number of psychiatrists and nonpsychiatric physicians, as well as mental health professionals from other disciplines were analyzed, which has helped to increase awareness of analysis in the broader professional community.
As time passed and the number of candidates grew, it finally became possible to organize a psychoanalytic study group in Nashville. This was accomplished in 1992, under the aegis of The American and by the initiative of Thomas Campbell and Volney Gay, who became the first and second presidents of the fledgling organization.
The presence of a psychoanalytic training program in the area has had a salutary effect on standards of practice. In the setting of a small community, the program's provision of opportunities for both treatment and supervision fortifies analytic standards even among those not directly involved in training.
Volney P. Gay, Ph.D., is a geographic training and supervising analyst of the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute.