Scholarship and research have long challenged psychoanalysis. Our most valued contributions have come from clinical experience. Yet the validity of such findings is subject to question because the clinical situation is rarely set up as an investigator's laboratory. Analysts, trained principally as clinicians, commonly have more respect for research and scholarship than they have actual knowledge of the methods involved in these pursuits. For much of the history of organized psychoanalysis, this difficulty was reflected in the lack of any specific means to support systematic study. The Committee on Scientific Activities (CSA), founded some twenty years ago to address this issue, has proved extraordinarily productive.
Twenty-five years ago Heinz Kohut, then chair of a committee of The American charged with studying these questions, reported three possible approaches to the problem. One would be to establish a third major branch of The American—Council and Board being the other two—that would be devoted to scientific investigations. Another possibility, less radical than the first but still a positive step, was to establish a committee of Council to deal with these issues. Finally, things could simply be left as they were. The second approach prevailed, and the Committee on Scientific Activities was founded. Recently, various task forces have recommended that the committee be given a more prominent place in the restructured organization of The American, in order to insure that scientific and scholarly issues have an appropriate voice.
Kohut's report, which still merits careful reading, emphasized the need for investigations that address central psychoanalytic questions. Too often, he lamented, analyst researchers abandoned analytic insight and instead addressed topics peripheral to psychoanalysis. Over its two decades, CSA has repeatedly struggled with this issue. Standard research methods are usually carefully designed to limit the impact of the observer's subjectivity and the idiosyncrasies of the research subject on the research. But idiosyncrasy and subjectivity are at the very heart of psychoanalysis. The problem of how to conduct truly psychoanalytic research continues to challenge us.
One of the first questions with which the committee struggled concerned the ethics of research in psychoanalysis. Freud, though remarking that psychoanalysis brooks no observers, nonetheless published detailed reports of analytic experience. Ever since, analysts have struggled with the apparently contradictory demands of making their work open to scientific scrutiny while preserving the analysand's privacy. After long deliberation the committee, rather than formulate general rules, chose to squarely charge analysts with the responsibility of exercising careful judgment in each case. While we may long for applicable rules to guide us, the analyst must act always in ways that will protect the patient. The recent emergence of a wide range of ethical thought means the committee must soon revisit these questions.
In a related but distinct area, the committee addressed the reporting of analytic materials. In published case reports authors often describe clinical events in a way that makes it impossible for the analyst reader to clearly picture what occurred in the analytic situation. Often readers cannot come to an informed independent judgment about the author's conclusions. The committee, in a report written by George Klumpner and Alvin Frank, described a means for reporting detailed analytic material in a way that clearly distinguishes data from inference. Although this method of reporting can deemphasize important aspects of the analytic situation, we were strongly influenced by the argument that the distinction between data and inference is central to scientific investigation. The committee, keeping in mind the important critiques that our initial report engendered, will revisit these questions as well.
Early on, the committee established a work regimen that over the years has proven fruitful. Rather than trying to accomplish all of its ends itself, the committee instead viewed itself as a generator of projects and work groups. The financing of psychoanalytic research has long been a major problem, and the establishment of a source of funds for analytic investigators was an early goal of the committee. To that end, the Fund for Psychoanalytic Research was created with the sponsorship and close cooperation of the committee. The Fund has served as a vehicle for raising and distributing research moneys. It also provides consultation to those applying for grants, through the preparation of careful critiques of research proposals. The list of early grant recipients reads like a Who's Who of empirical researchers in psychoanalysis. Though the fund has never had great sums of money to distribute, it has been extraordinarily effective in promoting the research of psychoanalytic investigators.
Because psychoanalytic ideas are often complex, locating material in the psychoanalytic literature is often challenging. Meaningful indexing of psychoanalytic publications is extremely difficult. As a step toward remedying that situation, CSA's subcommittee on indexing explored the use of words in psychoanalytic writing. George Klumpner's recently published A Guide to the Language of Psychoanalysis resulted from the quantitative study of psychoanalytic indexing and shows the interconnection of often overlapping psychoanalytic terms.
Under Klumpner's leadership, CSA started a program on computers in psychoanalysis. The committee was fortunate in having Paul Mosher as a member; his knowledge of computers was a ready resource when the microcomputer revolution began to impact our field. The workshop on computers that Paul founded has met regularly at the meetings, bright and early on Saturday mornings. It has served as a clearinghouse for computer-related issues, ranging from elementary questions about buying equipment to sophisticated research ventures. The JOURLIT and BOOKREV projects, which provide computerized indexes of psychoanalytic writings, though not officially part of CSA's work, have had a close relationship with the committee. A hard copy version of this index, Mosher's Title Key Word & Author Index to Psychoanalytic Journals, is an invaluable tool for psychoanalytic scholarship. Similarly, Robert Galatzer-Levy's two computer discussion groups—the Psychoanalytic Virtual Bulletin Board (open to analysts and candidates) and the Psychoanalytic Forum (open to all interested)—are allied with the committee. Currently they provide rapid communication for approximately six hundred psychoanalysts and friends worldwide. Perhaps the most exciting computer-related project of the committee is led by Vann Spruiell. This project will make much of the English-language periodical literature on psychoanalysis available and rapidly searchable on a CD-ROM disk. When completed, the project will change the face of psychoanalytic scholarship. For a few hundred dollars analysts will have available in their homes comprehensive, easily searched psychoanalytic libraries. Funds from the Sigourney Award, which CSA received last December, are being dedicated to this project.
At the request of Homer Curtis, then The American's president, CSA began in the late eighties to explore scientific evidence of the effectiveness of psychoanalysis. Under Henry Bachrach's leadership, a subcommittee critically reviewed
Robert M. Galatzer-Levy, M.D., chairs The American's Committee on Scientific Activities.
the published literature on these issues. We discovered that, while much of the research was methodologically flawed, it nonetheless pointed to the substantial effectiveness of analysis with appropriate patients. Among the surprising findings of the investigation was that the parameters usually thought to predict analytic outcome in fact had little predictive value. A paper summarizing these results appeared in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. The subcommittee then decided to expand its investigation to ask not only what is known currently about the effects of psychoanalysis but also what more we might want to know about it and how that can be investigated. Yale University Press will shortly publish our findings in a monograph, Does Psychoanalysis Work? Problems, Findings, Methods.
Psychoanalytic researchers realized almost half a century ago that careful study of psychoanalytic process often requires detailed information about analytic sessions. Because audiotape recording of analyses provides such detail, some research analysts began to record sessions. However, their investigations were hampered by issues of confidentiality and the problem that researchers were too often studying analyses conducted by themselves or their close associates. As researchers aged, they confronted the problem of preserving and guarding the materials they had collected. CSA responded by supporting formation of the Consortium for Psychoanalytic Research, a legally independent entity, to collect, preserve, and make available to researchers tapes and transcripts of psychoanalyses. Under the leadership of Sherwood Waldron, Jr., the consortium has collected a wide range of materials and provided them to several research groups.
A program closely allied with CSA is the Collaborative Analytic Multi-site Program (CAMP) led by Robert Wallerstein. Sophisticated investigators have come at analytic material with a variety of new tools in recent years. Usually, however, these investigations have been poorly coordinated, so that the relationship between various findings remains unclear. CAMP involves the application of a variety of measures to shared analytic material so that investigators can understand the interrelation of their various findings.
Psychoanalytic research and scholarship currently have no natural home. There is little place for psychoanalytic scholarship in the university, except in applications to the humanities. In analytic institutes, which remain primarily devoted to training clinicians, research is contingent on the enthusiasm of a small band of investigators and teachers. We desperately need a sustaining national or international infrastructure for psychoanalytic research, one that will ensure that resources, from teachers to funds, are widely available to support both research and the education of consumers of research. The committee is exploring how these ends may effectively be achieved. In another direction, the committee is addressing the relationship of psychanalysis to homosexuality. It is exploring such issues as the credibility of theories of the genesis of sexual orientation, the status of attempts to change it, and the special analytic needs of gay and lesbian analysands. A subcommittee headed by Bertram Cohler will explore these politically hot issues in a scientifically rigorous way.
Like many groups in The American, CSA is more than a working group. It provides an extraordinary opportunity for psychoanalysts interested in scholarly issues to collaborate over extended periods, to learn from one another, and to become friends. The development of a rich network of colleagues devoted to research and scholarship is among its finest accomplishments.