In 1971, when I became a member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (BPSI), I experienced the growing rift there as a young member trying to focus on building an analytic practice. Naturally, I was quite anxious and confused about what the eventual split might portend for my future. In retrospect, while those years were enervating for the membership as a whole, they were particularly hellish for those in leadership positions; the demands made on them were excessive and destructive to the conduct of their lives. When, many years later, I became president of the society, a number of us saw a chance to develop a closer working relationship between BPSI and the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England, East (PINE). Set up in consequence of the split, that organization was still home to many old friends and colleagues. In this effort I felt it important to understand what we had struggled with in the split.
Piquing my curiosity further, and increasing my need to know, was a recurrent pattern: for years the idea of appointing a part-time salaried dean to lead our overburdened institute had regularly surfaced, only to be dismissed when memories of the split emerged in association with a wish not to repeat that chapter in our history. It was a chapter in which James Mann, the only person to have served as dean, figured prominently. Reading Mann's 1972 Dean's Report and Paul Myerson's Presidents Report of the same year helped me to see more clearly the organizational problems underlying the split. The recollections of our historian, Sanford Gifford, and my own memories provide the rest of the data for this brief history.
The Boston split had most of the elements common to such rifts: personality conflicts, an in-group and an out-group, a sense that much could be gained by a split, and a feeling of injustice and loss around the eventual separation of the two groups. Because organizational issues proved especially important in this struggle, I will focus on how they came into play.
In the late sixties and early seventies there was a drastic cutback of federal funding for psychiatric training and research in the wake of the Nixon administration's attack on the Great Society and the mental health movement. BPSI's response was a felt need to become more actively involved in these issues. There was great concern that the organization would be unable to meet the now urgent need to help would-be candidates through increased teaching and supervision of psychotherapy, and to help young members disenfranchised by teaching and research cutbacks. An inclusive, growing organization had to be created to serve these needs. Paul Myerson, then BPSI president, addressed this concern in his 1972 report. “A step of this kind,” he wrote, “requires thorough discussion, then the setting up of committees to study the problem, and the reporting back by the committees to parent bodies, where there are always competing matters to discuss.”
The first organizational problem, the “parent bodies” mentioned, was actually the “parent body,” the institute, as the society existed but had little actual function or organization and was dominated by the institute. Since nothing happened without the letter's permission, the necessary structure for the society needed to be created in institute discussions, where there were “competing” demands. BPSI was, at that time, a very large institute, with nearly a hundred candidates. As Myerson apologized, “the machinery for processing these changes is, to say the least, cumbersome, and I can well appreciate your impatience. I exhort you to be tolerant.”
A second organizational issue was that the leadership had raised expectations for growth and inclusion. As Sanford Gifford recalls, “there were all kind of proposals to set up outpatient clinics, a day care center run by the institute's child training program, grandiose ideas for taking programs under the umbrella of the institute.” Thus, an already overburdened Education Committee was faced with increased demands from a large group of concerned colleagues not particularly familiar with the inner workings of the organization.
Another organizational issue was the potential power of the society. BPSI had combined the society and the institute in 1947, leaving the constitutional power to rule in the hands of the society's democratically elected officers. In actuality, however, the institute and its training analysts both held the power and reaped its rewards. Yet all along the institute, particularly the Education Committee, knew that in fact the society retained the power to rule. In the early seventies the institute still controlled the course of events, and in this time of tension came to be resented by the larger group in the unstructured society. All training analysts were “reporting” and as such had a voice in each progressive step a candidate took: matriculation, readiness for cases, promotion, and graduation. There was concern about that, as well as negative feelings about what many considered the autocratic and elite characteristics of the training analyst group.
The fire was dramatically fueled by a crisis between the institute and the society over Mann's dismissal as dean in 1973. According to Sanford Gifford, the deanship had been an experiment, an attempt to deal with both the dissatisfactions of the beleaguered Education Committee and the expectant wishes of the members of the society, who urgently wished to be more involved. Although Mann, the first to hold the position of dean, had been appointed in 1971 by the Education Committee, he noted four areas of responsibility in his 1972 report: “the institute, the society, our professional relationship with resident training programs, and our relationship to the community.” This overly broad mandate posed another organizational problem, one that led to increasing conflict between institute and society.
Mann initiated many reforms with candidates and established a Student Advisory Committee to the Dean. Candidates Richard Fox, Jon Gudeman, Robert Pyles, and Myrna Weiss were chosen to advise the dean on “what would improve the atmosphere of the institute.” Among the committee's recommendations was the establishment of full and open discussion of the seminars between candidates and the Curriculum Committee.
The dean also set up a Members Advisory Committee to the Dean. This group, which included Gerald Adler, Marvin Krims, Morton Newman, and Norman Zinberg, identified several problems, most notably (1) the existence of a “two-class system” that placed training analysts above all others, and (2) a need for greater openness between institute and society. Of particular predictive importance is the
dean's next thought: “The call for openness is not an invitation to divisiveness and disorder unless we choose to make it so. I share the belief that the educational process [should] not be a closed system.” The first action taken by members of the Members Advisory Committee was to request a meeting with the Committee of Training Analysts in order to clarify selection criteria for the appointment of training analysts. At the meeting there was complete agreement on the need for clear standards for selection and a procedure that would make it possible to apply for training analyst status. Up until that time, members were “tapped” for consideration, and the process leading to selection was controlled completely by the training analysts themselves.
Both of the new advisory committees put the dean in the position of advocating for openness. The process became divisive, however, as calls for change accelerated, placing ever greater pressure on the Education Committee. The Coordinating Committee, which included the dean and the chairs of all subcommittees of the Education Committee, became a focal point for the growing tensions. A storm of protest arose in the Education Committee over the right of the Coordinating Committee to make decisions without its consent. At the root of the uproar was a decision to have all communications to candidates be sent from the dean, who was perceived as usurping the Education Committee's power. Eventually, all of the troubling actions taken by the Coordinating Committee were rescinded. This restored the power and autonomy of the Education Committee but also led to divisiveness within it, as well as between the committee and the dean. In his 1972 report, Mann makes his concern clear: “It is the training analyst who proposes, prohibits, promotes, and disposes. The general atmosphere of the time encourages rebellion, protest, and anti-establishment sentiment so that the desire for openness and less intrusiveness promotes strong feeling about the encrusted authoritarian establishment, the ‘Training Analyst Club.‘”
Needless to say, the Education Committee decided not to reappoint the dean, a decision communicated to the society as a fait accompli. This was taken as adding insult to injury. Although the dean was in fact appointed by the Education Committee, he functioned also as a dean for the society, an arrangement that gave its members the feeling that they had a right to participate in deciding the deanship. It was Robert Gardner who had the unenviable task of conveying to the society the thinking of the Education Committee in not reappointing. His report suggested a way to cede some power to the society while retaining the traditional prerogatives of the training analyst group. The response was overwhelmingly negative. The society, feeling its power had been usurped, was in an uproar. Some felt the problem lay mainly in the presentation, but others cited the peremptory nature of the process. In any case, Gardner felt strongly rebuked.
After that, the situation was completely polarized. A group of five training analysts assembled by Gardner began drafting a report intended to suggest a solution, while the society held exhaustive meetings as a committee of the whole, as well as numerous small-group discussions. In the process it became clear that proposed radical reforms giving “power to the people” did not enjoy majority support. Standards were at issue, particularly with regard to the proposal that all graduate analysts be granted eligibility to be considered for training analyst status. The society reaffirmed that training analysts had special knowledge, and that the Education Committee was a hierarchy based on expertise. It was concluded that the democratic process should not alter this system.
Several weeks after the blowup, the group of five presented its report to the Education Committee. The report predicted that the tension and fighting would continue and that the resulting acrimonious atmosphere would be antithetical to the best standards of training. The report supported the creation of an ideal institute, a small group of people entirely dedicated to analysis. It also focused on the tension between academic psychiatry and psychoanalysis. The five concluded their report by announcing their intention to leave BPSI to found PINE and invited others to join them. Half of the BPSI training analysts left during the spring and summer of 1973.
The senior analysts who left were the personal friends or the analysts or supervisors of many who stayed. This left many of us feeling like children of divorce — wishing deeply to reconcile the parents, hearing negative rumors and terrible stories about them, and in general feeling helpless, enraged, and enmeshed in a process of separation. From the beginning, reconciliation was earnestly sought by BPSI. There was a sense that by now the worst was over, the radical challenge having been defeated, and those who left were asked to return. Attempts at dialogue were not successful, but throughout 1973 and 1974 the hope remained alive that reconciliation might be possible through the intercession of The American.
In January 1974, PINE applied to the Board on Professional Standards for affiliation. Through most of that year, with very little happening, there was a feeling of disbelief about the split. Then, the following January, a group from The American made a consultative visit to Boston. Its report noted approvingly that “two institutes excellent but different can eventuate as against the probably corrosive consequences of an attempted forced unity.” The report recommended that BOPS acknowledge the inevitability of the split and that it foster negotiations to find optimal methods of separation. Those in the BPSI camp strongly disagreed, as now it seemed their turn to be rebuked. The loss of many of BPSI's best analysts and teachers seemed too great to bear, and the destructive consequences to the analytic community too bleak a prospect. Finally, in May 1975, PINE was given approval by BOPS, by a large majority, to proceed as an institute.
BPSI's view of this was that the role of The American was crucial and that PINE's friends in The American had made the split possible. BPSI felt betrayed, as The American had seemed to act so uncharacteristically. In similar situations before (and since), it had always played the mediator, working diligently to avert a split or to patch one up before things went too far. Now twenty years have passed, and both groups have prospered. BPSI-PINE friendships have survived, and in the current climate, so difficult for psychoanalysis, there is added reason for BPSI and PINE to work together. For many of us, it is a special joy to be with old friends who, like us, are children of divorce, with their own stories to tell.
We in Boston, having endured a split, see a parallel at the national level in the strained relations between the Board on Professional Standards and the Executive Council. Fears in each of weakness and domination by the other have caused repeated problems and lead many to feel that some structural change in their relationship needs to be made. Perhaps it is not so surprising, then, that Anton Kris of BPSI and Robert Pyles of PINE, both of whom lived through the Boston split, have taken leading roles in proposing a workable, stable reorganization of The American.