For years, patients in Milwaukee seeking analysis could either languish on local waiting lists or commute to Chicago. Well into the 1980s there was still a shortage of analysts in the Wisconsin city.
In 1979 William Offenkrantz, a training and supervising analyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, moved to Milwaukee to establish the Wisconsin Psychoanalytic Foundation. His enthusiasm, vigor, and considerable organizational skills were apparent as he forged a cooperative effort by the Foundation, the Medical College of Wisconsin, and Columbia Hospital, a private not-for-profit community teaching hospital. An energetic board of community leaders joined in efforts to bring psychoanalytic training to Wisconsin. An endowment was raised, and out-of-town analysts were recruited.
First David Black, son of Milwaukee analyst Samuel Black, returned home in 1980, having trained and practiced in San Francisco. From 1982 to 1984 four additional analysts moved to Wisconsin. L. David Levi and Jon Meyer were recruited from the Washington Institute, Steven Steury and Walter Todd Davison from Baltimore-Washington. Throughout the 1980s increasing numbers of Wisconsin candidates were accepted at the Chicago Institute. Now local candidates could have their training analysis and supervision in Milwaukee and attend classes in Chicago, just as Madison students had done since the arrival there of Joseph Kepecs in 1965. Kepecs, a former president of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Society, has been an important influence in the department of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. He has been a vigorous teacher there, in addition to his role as geographic training and supervising analyst.
By 1989 there were five training and supervising analysts in Wisconsin: Black, Davison, Kepecs, Meyer, and Steury. Levi had returned to Washington, and Offenkrantz had retired to Arizona. Meanwhile, in 1985, the Wisconsin Study Group had achieved society status, having grown in size to ten graduate analysts.
The Society's relationship to the Medical College of Wisconsin was further strengthened during the tenure of Harry Prosen, current chair of its Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine. Psychiatry residents spend much of their second year learning dynamic psychiatry at the Columbia Hospital Psychotherapy Center, where Davison chairs the department of psychiatry, Meyer directs the Psychotherapy Center, and David Black is chief psychiatrist. At the Medical College of Wisconsin, Steury has served as director of medical student education for five years.
The relationship between the Chicago Institute and the Wisconsin psychoanalytic enterprise has undergone the usual vicissitudes expected between a sponsor and a new program. Chicago's directorship has passed from George Pollack to Arnold Goldberg and now to Thomas Pappadis. Chairs of Chicago's Geographic Committee who have aided efforts in Wisconsin include David Dean Brockman, Max Forman, Bernard Rubin, and now Mark Levey. Chicago's administration and faculty have encouraged and supported the Wisconsin New Training Facility's organizational and teaching efforts. Chicago analysts have been generous in commuting to Milwaukee to teach classes.
In the academic years 1993–94 and 1994–95, the New Training Facility has for the first time been able to offer first and second year candidates a full curriculum of academic course work in Milwaukee, obviating the need to commute to Chicago for instruction.