Psychoanalysis in Canada has a long history. The early part is usually divided into two periods: the Ernest Jones years in Toronto, at the beginning of the century, and the institutional developments in Montreal in the forties and fifties. The latter culminated in the establishment of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, a national body responsible for all psychoanlytic training and for the scientific, clinical, and organizational functions of an IPA component society.
In 1908, at the age of twenty-nine, Jones accepted a position as a pathologist at the Toronto Asylum from C. K. Clarke, a Toronto psychiatrist then visiting the Kraepelin Clinic in Munich. Before sailing for Canada, Jones, who had been practicing psychoanalysis since 1905, when he read The Interpretation of Dreams, attended the Salzburg Congress, where he first met Freud. In a letter to Jung, Freud describes Jones as “an interesting and worthy man, but a fanatic—a hungry Cassius. He denies all heredity; to his mind, even I am reactionary.” Jung, less charitable, found him “an enigma, so incomprehensible that it is quite uncanny.” It is important to note, however, as Alan Parkin documents in his 1987 A History of Psychoanalysis in Canada, that fifteen years earlier Campbell Meyers, a student of Charcot who had been influenced by Freud's early writings, had opened a “nervous ward” in a general hospital, thus promoting the treatment of neurotic patients in traditional medical wards, away from chronic mental hospitals.
Jones was first appointed as a pathologist at the Toronto Asylum and, a year later, became director of the first psychiatric outpatient clinic in Canada. But Jones's ambitions extended beyond what he perceived as colonial Toronto. During his five-year sojourn in Canada, during which he lived with his sister and Loe Kahn, Jones made no effort to develop a psychoanalytic nucleus in Toronto. Instead; he traveled widely in Europe and the eastern United States, teaching and promoting psychoanalysis.
The second period begins in 1939, with the arrival in Montreal of Miguel Prados, a refugee from the Franco regime. A slender, dark Spaniard with a penetrating gaze, Prados was intensely committed to psychoanalysis. Self-analyzed and self-taught, Prados had no credentials of membership in a psychoanalytic society; his motivation seemed to spring entirely from his tremendous enthusiasm for the new science. A stern and passionate teacher, his intensity was still palpable, even in the late fifties, in his lectures at McGill to psychiatric residents. Father Mailloux, a French-trained analyst, soon joined Prados to form the Montreal Psychoanalytic Club, a fast-growing group of professionals soon to become the forum for an active psychoanalytic dialogue among local members and invited guests. With the arrival of Theo Chantrier in 1948, Eric Wittkower, Alastair MacLeod, and George Zavitzianos in 1950, and W. Clifford Scott, former president of the British Society, in 1953, all of them IPA members, the club became a study group. Securing a sponsorship for the group took time and involved endless negotiations between The American and the IPA.
As Prados recalled, “In view of the considerable delays and difficulties in obtaining the American affiliation…, it was decided unanimously by our group to apply officially to the British Society, and this affiliation was arranged in a matter of weeks, after which we officially dropped our application to the American Psychoanalytic Association” As a result, the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, a bilingual group, was incorporated in Quebec in 1955. Nine founding members, including, in addition to those mentioned above, Hans and Friedl Aufreiter, two Viennese analysts, and Bruce Ruddick, a Canadian trained at the New York Institute, signed a petition for incorporation. In 1957, at the Twentieth IPA Congress, held in Paris, the CPS was recognized as a component society. In 1961 the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis, the educational body of the Society, was formed.
Up to that point organized psychoanalysis in Canada was based predominantly in Montreal. In the mid-sixties, however, as psychoanalysis began to develop rapidly in Toronto, and as Montreal analysts began to group themselves along language lines, it became clear that the CPS bylaws needed amending. The authorization of Constituent Branches allowed the Canadian Society to maintain organizational unity while providing for autonomy within geographic and linguistic boundaries. The changes came slowly and not without argument and tension, but, to the credit of all concerned, negotiations were conducted and adjustments made without divisiveness. The two national bodies, the Society and the Institute, with eight and four branches respectively, have been functioning smoothly and efficiently. A large measure of fairness and effectiveness is provided by a set of unwritten laws, those gentlemen's agreements that have guided the Society in the past and that still prove useful when unexpected challenges arise to the cohesion of the Society.
At present the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society/Société Canadienne de Psychanalyse, governed by its National Council, comprises 381 regular members. Every year at the beginning of June, the Society convenes for its Annual General Meeting, which is preceded by a national scientific meeting. The Institute, governed by the National Training Committee, comprises 59 training analysts and 70 candidates. Its annual meeting follows that of the society. All meetings are conducted in Canada's two official languages.
The four branches of the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis have a good deal of autonomy with regard to theoretical orientation and organizational structure. However, to maintain “portability” from branch to branch, certain basic principles are adhered to by all branches, covering the admission of candidates, the tripartite system of training, and the selection of training analysts. Nonmedical applicants have always been accepted for training by the Institute, and lay analysis has never been an issue within the Society.
At its 1991 Annual General Meeting, the Canadian Society decided to undertake publication of the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis/Revue Canadienne de Psychanalyse, now the bilingual organ of the Society. The first issue appeared in May 1993. The Journal/Revue reflects not only the bilingual nature of the Society, but also its theoretical pluralism and the influence of the three major streams within its membership—the American, the French, and the British.