The history of the New Jersey Psychoanalytic Society involves two quite different phases of development— the history of the society proper, a very positive experience with The American's Executive Council and its committees, and the history of the institute, a very negative, frustrating, and eventually futile involvement. Let us begin with the former.
In 1955 a study group was formed by six analysts; their first meeting, held at the Maplewood home of Raymond Gehl, was attended by Herman Schlionsky (the first analyst in New Jersey and a training analyst at both the New York Institute and Columbia), Samuel Weiss, Howard Schlossman, John Hughes, Benedict Bernstein, and their host. Soon the group soon began rotating to different homes and was joined by three additional analysts—Russell Carrier, Helen Daniells, and Bernard Fine, the last of whom resigned in 1960 when he relocated to New York City. These nine decided to form a society chartered by the state of New Jersey, and an application was made to The American for society status. At an April 23, 1959, meeting of the Executive Council, recognition was granted, with the original nine as charter members.
Later the same year, their ranks were joined by George Zavitzianos, Franz Husserl, and Bernard German. The first open meeting of the society was held at the Academy of Medicine of New Jersey in Belleville, with Schlionsky chosen president and Gehl president-elect. It became customary, beginning at this meeting, for the president-elect to present the first paper of the year and to choose the discussants. Charles Brenner and Bertram Lewin were chosen, and they willingly accepted. In a short time both were elected to honorary membership. Although Lewin moved to the Pittsburgh area, Brenner and his wife Irma remained closely involved with the society and without fail attended its annual dinner dance. The only other person accorded honorary membership, in 1985, was Sylvan Keiser. He and his wife Beatrice became great friends to the society in all its endeavors.
As time passed and the society grew, meetings were held alternately at St. Barnabas Hospital in Essex County and Hackensack Hospital in Bergen County. In 1955 the state of New Jersey, having repealed its antivivisection laws, established the first medical school in New Jersey, at Seton Hall University in Jersey City, and later a second one, at Rutgers in New Brunswick. The first soon moved to Newark, and eventually the two merged to become known as the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. As the society developed and grew, these two schools and their psychiatric residencies became important teaching connections for the members of the society.
During the rapid growth years of 1961 through 1971, many new members joined the society. They included Frank Johnson, Lawrence Deutsch, Julian Kassen, William Niederland, Henry Shelton, Martin Silverman, Al Green, Anna Burton, Jacob Stump, Jerome Silverman, Philip Wilson, Cecilia Karol, Ellen Simon, Leon Altman, Harry Beskind, David Mayer, Eugene Friedberg, Peter Deutsch, Stanley Weiss, Charles Goodstein, and Henry Kaminer. Other members joined subsequently, until at present there are forty-seven. During these formative years, the members were very productive, presenting much original work. Discussions were lively, and visiting speakers added to the excitement.
There were several significant dates in the society's early history. In 1966, the New Jersey Psychoanalytic Foundation was established for the purpose of developing an institute in New Jersey. In 1967, Ira Mintz was appointed editor of the new society bulletin, first published in 1968. In 1972, Lawrence Deutsch and Benedict Bernstein conceived and organized the first regional meeting of analytic societies in the greater New York area. The meeting, held at Mohonk Lodge in New York State, was hosted by the New Jersey Society and was the first in a series of annual meetings.
Let us now turn to the darker side, the twenty-nine-year effort to establish a New Jersey Psychoanalytic Institute under the auspices of The American. As noted, the New Jersey Psychoanalytic Foundation was set up in 1966, through the efforts of Samuel Weiss, Howard Schlossman, Lawrence Deutsch, Benedict Bernstein, and Raymond Gehl. Application was made to The American's Board on Professional Standards, and Homer Curtis and Donald Burnham of the Committee on New Training Facilities were assigned to assist the society in setting up a program. A meeting was held in Baltimore with these advisors, which led eventually to sponsorship by the Downstate Psychoanalytic Institute in Brooklyn (now NYU). During this affiliation, members of the foundation taught candidates, attended committee meetings of every kind, and were well schooled in the setting up and running of an institute. The relationship with Downstate was excellent, and everyone was extremely cooperative. In 1969 two members of the foundation, Howard Schlossman and Raymond Gehl, were appointed training analysts under the geographic rule. The first candidate accepted to the program was Howard Schwartz; he was soon followed by Myunghee Kim and Ronald Fleischmann.
A problem that became obvious during the almost ten years of active affiliation with Downstate was that at no time were any classes in New Jersey encouraged or permitted. The answer to any inquiry as to when a New Jersey Institute might begin to function was always that there were not enough candidates. This answer was echoed by the Board on Professional Standards, despite the fact that over the years seven Downstate candidates had been accepted from New Jersey, a number that in fact did not reflect the true pool of potential candidates; many of these, it may be assumed, were deterred by travel difficulties or by the availability of other analytic training groups, including institutes of The American no more distant, for which they might have had a preference. During this time, the foundation added Ira Mintz, Leon Altman, William Niederland, and Helen Davidoff-Hirsch to its roster, followed later by Martin Willick and William Grossman. Foundation members could not understand why numbers were considered so important; the fledgling program in New Jersey met all other requirements, having training analysts and institute experience sufficient to the task. Eventually, however, New Jersey was dropped from the Committee on New Training Facilities.
In 1980 and 1981 the impetus to form an institute was renewed. Various institutions in New Jersey were asked by the society to evaluate their
Raymond Gehl, M.D., is a founder and three-time past president of the New Jersey Psychoanalytic Society.
need for a psychoanalytic training center in the state and to write letters outlining those opinions. Under a covering letter dated April 30, 1981, to Lawrence Hall, then chair of the Board on Professional Standards, these letters were forwarded to The American. The covering letter detailed the desperation felt by the members of the New Jersey Society in its competition with the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP), and the APA's Division 39. In a final sentence it quoted Henry Murphree, chair of the department of psychiatry at Rutgers Medical School, stating that “New Jersey has lost residents in psychiatry to other states because there has been no analytic training nearby.” It also included the following information: “There are forty-five members of the New Jersey Psychoanalytic Society. Of the forty-five at least half are already teaching at psychoanalytic institutes in New York and Philadelphia, and of the ten members of the foundation six are training analysts (two with the New York Institute and four with the Psychoanalytic Institute at New York University Medical Center). In the two medical schools now functioning in New Jersey there are eighteen psychiatric residents in the Newark program and twenty-four in the Rutgers program.” This information led to a meeting with Arnold Cooper, then president of The American, and finally to New Jersey's reinstatement with the Committee on New Training Facilities.
Anton Kris was assigned to New Jersey as the Board's contact with the foundation. In a telephone contact with him, the New Jersey situation was presented and the feeling conveyed that sponsorship by a New York or Philadelphia institute would lead to the same unhappy result experienced earlier. It was requested that a special committee be set up by Board or Council to supervise and sponsor new facilities in such situations as New Jersey found itself. After consultation with the Committee on New Training facilities, Kris returned with the answer that the only acceptable road to institute status was through sponsorship by an institute. Foundation members, though extremely disappointed, nonetheless proceeded to seek such sponsorship. However, not one of the institutes in New York or Philadelphia had either the time or the inclination to take on the responsibility. This response convinced the foundation that the sponsorship system cannot work in situations where a new facility is considered a potential competitor by the very institutes it must depend on for assistance. Confirmation of this conclusion occurred much later, in a letter sent October 3, 1984, to Helen David-off-Hirsch of the New Jersey Foundation. In it, Leo Sadow, then chair of the Committee on New Training Facilities, stated, “I can only underscore the various problems noted by Dr. Curtis. They are problems common to all training facilities, although geographical proximity and personal relations to existing institutes in New York do add an additional complication to your situation.” Sadow also wanted to know “what progress you have made in acquiring a sponsoring institute.”
Not until 1989, under the leadership of Anna Burton, then president of the society, was another effort made to advance the idea of an institute. Since the foundation had been incorporated into the society by this time, Burton sought once again to get the Board's attention. This time she was able to obtain promises of sponsorship from both the New York Psychoanalytic and NYU (successor to Downstate). In a vote, the society chose the New York Psychoanalytic, and by 1991 two New Jersey candidates had applied to the program. Since then, however, no more candidates have applied from New Jersey, for a variety of reasons.
Despite the changing patterns of health delivery systems, and the organic orientation of psychiatry in general, New Jersey medical schools maintain an interest in psychoanalysis. Haikaz Grigorian, a member of the New Jersey Society, is chief of the residency program at the Newark Medical School, while Henry Murphree, whose letter favorable to analysis was quoted earlier, remains chief of psychiatry at Rutgers. But these connections are not alone sufficient to maintain a psychoanalytic presence. Besides the time and inconvenience associated with sending residents to New York, a dependence on institutes from surrounding states is hardly an acceptable situation for New Jersey medical schools.
Earlier this year an incident occurred involving the New Jersey Society that shows what can happen when geographic location is not given the consideration it deserves. In May a message was sent from Judith Schachter, president of The American, to Henry Kaminer, president of the New Jersey Society, concerning her having heard that NAAP was attempting to obtain a legal foothold in New Jersey as official certifying body for psychoanalysts practicing there. Schachter was concerned that this move, if successful, would set a precedent that might spread throughout the country. The facts were that indeed many members of NAAP had descended on Trenton and convinced a senate group to endorse their bill. They succeeded, and the senate passed a bill to forbid state boards from regulating psychoanalysis and to define an analyst as anyone certified by NAAP's certifying unit, the American Board for Accreditation in Psychoanalysis (ABAP). As the bill was about to be voted on by the state assembly, Kaminer, together with Stanley Kern and Kenneth Gould, was able to meet with the assembly committee and change their minds. Instead of passing the bill, making it a state law, the committee put off the vote pending further study.
The striking fact in all of this is that it is precisely the situation the New Jersey Society had been predicting all these years. In meetings and in letters its members had continued to stress that if the society was not strengthened by an institute presence that promoted training and set standards, there would be no way of competing with other groups. State legislators are not easily convinced that the standards of New York City, Philadelphia, and The American should be adopted in New Jersey when no institute practicing these standards exists in the state, and when other groups are graduating and certifying candidates in large numbers. That this information had to be given to the New Jersey Society quite late in the day, when the move by NAAP had already become a critical issue, only attests to a lessening of the society's political involvement in matters concerning psychoanalysis.
In addition, the society's influence has over the years considerably diminished with psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. This is evidenced by the outcome of a course in psychoanalytic psychotherapy recently offered by the society. The course, though well advertised throughout the state in all circles, had eventually to be canceled for lack of interest.