The Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (LAPSI) celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year. It has propagated, albeit often in acrimony, many of the analytic training centers in Los Angeles. Yet as 1996 draws to a close, a growing spirit of cooperation pervades the LA analytic scene.
When David Brunswick arrived in Los Angeles from Europe in 1930, he joined an informal analytic study group that had been meeting for three years. He became its leader and encouraged Ernst Simmel and Otto Fenichel to emigrate to LA. The three became the vanguard in the growing analytic community.
In the 1930s training was exciting and informal. But in 1946, following World War II, as analysis entered a boom period, the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute was formalized and accredited by The American. Tragically, Fenichel died in 1946 and Simmel the following year. With the change in power, dissension arose within the institute and two factions developed. Conflict increased, and in 1950 one group split to form the Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Medicine of Southern California. It included May Romm, Martin Grotjahn, Norman Levy, Judd Marmor, and Milton Miller. Brunswick, Ralph Greenson, Ernst Lewy, Frances Deri, Hannah Fenichel, and Charles Tidd were among those training analysts who remained.
Mel Mandel, who began his training at LAPI in 1952, was witness, contestant, and often conciliator to the events of this half century. He recalls that Greenson asked if he knew of the recent split and if Mandel thought he was choosing the right group. Mandel said he wished to obtain a classical analysis and heard LAPI could provide that. After training he might be able to tell if it was the right group. Mandel was accepted for training, but he says he's still unsure if it was because or in spite of his answer.
“The animosity was as thick as a heavy fog,” Mandel recalls. “Issues were hot and passions were high; self justifications were rampant.” Convictions developed about and within each group. LAPI was considered European-oriented: orthodox, not exclusively medical, and calling for five-days-a-week analysis. Southern California was American: modern, medical, and willing to experiment with group and three-day-a-week analysis. Anna and Sigmund Freud were the “patron saints” of LAPI; Franz Alexander patron saint of Southern California. One had to choose sides or risk ostracism, but Mandel and others often found the alignments of the two camps puzzling. Later arrivals to the the analytic scene would be loyal to their convictions but without the fervor of the original participants.
The fifties and early sixties were a golden age for psychoanalysis in LA, and both institutes prospered. But by the beginning of the sixties, new problems arose at LAPI. An internal struggle between two institute factions, focused around its two charismatic leaders, Ralph Greenson and Leo Rangell, resulted in a deadlock within the Education Committee and the impossibility of appointing new training analysts. A committee, stimulated by and including a number of younger members was appointed in 1965 to rewrite LAPI's bylaws. In 1967 the group completed its task and converted LAPI into probably the most democratic institute and society in The American. Graduates with five years of faculty standing and who wished to become training analysts could apply, rather than be tapped. Voting on training analysts was by two-thirds majority of a group composed of the Faculty Committee and the Coordinating Council. Candidates could choose their training analyst, and analysts were not to report on progress of the candidates. The newly restructured organization was now a single organization known as the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.
Although 1967 restructuring resolved one major problem, another area of discontent grew into a major unresolvable conflict. This was the result of a growing mutual animosity in LAPSI between members with Kleinian viewpoints and the rest. Albert Mason believes this history dates to when Ivan McGuire introduced some institute members to the British object relations writings, who then identified themselves as Kleinians. Some of the leading British exponents, such as Herbert Rosenfeld and Hannah Segal, were invited to Los Angeles. They presented cases, conducted seminars, and supervised. Local interest waxed, and many desired Kleinian analysis.
Wilfred Bion, a leading member and a past-president of the British Psycho-Analytic
This article is based on the Oral History Workshop held in May 1996. Participants were Mel Mandel, Albert Mason, Terrence McBride, and Warren Procci. Supplementary information came from TAP articles by Lee Shershow and Harry Brickman (TAP 27/2, 1993) and by Jean Sanville and Mel Mandel (TAP 30/2, 1996).
Institute, agreed to move to LA. Bion, who was then seventy, asked Mason to join him. They arrived in 1968 and a year later were joined by Susan Isaacs. Mason compares Bion and himself to “the new girl in town—a lot of people wanted a dance.” The British attracted analysands, some of whom were dissatisfied with their personal analyses. Mason says, “Often the dissatisfied were dismayed when what they got was analysis, not miracles.”
The English and their American colleagues created a virtual second school within LAPSI. Ralph Greenson and Leo Rangell counted themselves among the friends and followers of Anna Freud and powerfully opposed the Kleinians. Ironically, in London, where the Klein-Freud conflict originated, the British were able to compromise and avoid an institute split. But in LA the battle was joined, and strife intensified into the early seventies. “The atmosphere was acrimonious, civility was lost,” Mandel recalls. “Teaching was impossible and chaos ensued.”
“All hell broke loose,” Mason recollects. Mason believes that Greenson, who had great charisma and influence, was an important factor in the rising tensions. Then one day in 1975, to the dismay of Mason and the other Kleinian analysts, Arthur Ourieff said The American instructed that no Kleinian should teach, train, or supervise in the LA Institute. He went on to say that traditional American analysis is the analysis of Hartman, Kris, and Loewenstein. Mason took the matter to the IPA, who sent a three-person committee to investigate. The committee, not faulting The American, reported that it was a local matter.
At the 1975 Fall Meeting of The American, BOPS intervened and Edward Weinshel appointed an Ad Hoc Committee on Los Angeles, chaired by Joan Fleming. In January 1976 a group called the Elite Sixteen, headed by Greenson, petitioned The American to break away, in order to form a new institute. But by the next day they had second thoughts, and withdrew their petition. All members of LAPSI now realized how precarious the existence of their institute had become. Fortunately, the Board's ad hoc committee came to work together with a local Los Angeles Committee on Unification of the Institute, organized and headed by Mandel and Len Rosengarten, and together they developed a unification plan. At the urging of the committees LAPSI members began to meet each other in small seminars. The dean and assistant dean resigned, and Mandel and Seymour Bird were elected Director and Assistant Director of the institute. By the May meeting the immediate crisis was over, and reparative processes were organized by the national and local groups.
The Kleinian group was diluted when some of the American Kleinians followed one of their leaders into the self-psychology movement of Heinz Kohut and was weakened somewhat by the return to England of Bion and some of the other British Kleinians.
LAPSI returned to full functioning and has prospered over the past twenty years. It now has over 150 members and fifty candidates.
Many Kleinians became weary of the fight and, wishing to simply train their own members, affiliated with the California Graduate Institute, a psychology school that had a psychoanalytic division. However, analysts from LAPSI (and a few from SCPI) who went to CGI and came to disagree with its training standards, left to form a new group, which incorporated in 1984 as the Psychoanalytic Center of California. Kleinians who had remained with LAPSI joined the new organization, while many retained dual memberships.
When the lawsuit brought by a group of psychologists against The American was settled out of court in 1987, new possibilities developed. The agreement allowed for United States institutes and societies that were not part of The American to have direct membership in the IPA. Mason, Rudolph Ekstein, James Grotstein, and Fred Vaquer were training analysts approved by The American. Together with ten other members of the IPA, PCC met the size requirements for an IPA institute. PCC had its first IPA site visit in 1989. It was made a provisional society, and it became a full member of the IPA in 1993. It has forty faculty members and fifty candidates. Major training differences include emphasis on British object relations, especially the work of Klein; a year of infant observation; and six months of instruction on the work of Bion.
The Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies also benefited from the results of the lawsuit, Terrence McBride reports. LAISPS's antecedent was a psychoanalytic study group formed by psychologists and social workers. Some analysts had official institute training prior to The American's decision to limit analytic training to physicians. However, most were excluded from training and had no choice but to obtain it in a “bootleg” manner. Some of them sought supervision and analysis with IPA-trained analysts from LA. Often these were members of the two American Psychoanalytic Association institutes.
The group gradually coalesced under the auspices of the Los Angeles Psychological Association, and in 1970 it incorporated, modeling its institute on IPA component institutes. It was an active participant in the suit brought by psychologists, and it quickly took advantage of the ability to apply for IPA institute status. IPA site visits began in 1988, provisional status was given in 1991, and LAISPS became an IPA institute in 1995, the year of its twenty-fifth anniversary. It now has seventy members and thirty candidates. McBride mentions that the institute was formed by analysts from diverse schools and that it has never identified with one particular point of view. It continues to offer broad psychoanalytic perspectives.
During the difficult years in LAPSI, the Institute for Psychoanalytic Medicine of Southern California thrived in relative tranquility. Although the organization originally decided to take a decidedly medical identity, by 1962 it changed its name to the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute. Interestingly, when The American developed a training program for research candidates, SCPI reached out in a major program to train academics. Peter Loewenberg became a guiding force in the research candidate program. It became a resounding success, and the State of California granted licensure as research psychoanalysts to those enrolled in the program.
After many years of tranquility and growth, however, dissension eventually arose in SPCI. In the late 1980s an event dubbed by some as “the training analyst's war” erupted. Some attributed it to the unwillingness of the older generation to allow the younger generation to assume leadership of the institute. Others saw it as due to major theoretical disagreements between self-psychologists and traditionalists. Procci notes the irony: SCPI, which never considered itself as traditional, was now attacked from within as being traditional. In early 1991, a group largely composed of analysts from SCPI with a few prominent members of LAPSI founded a new institute—the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Its mandate was that no centralized national or international body would exert control over its educational
process, and it would remain unaffiliated wtih any outside regulating organization. Five years following graduation all graduates will be appointed training analysts. ICP accepts three-times-a week analysis and gives credit for prior analysis and experience. It has had success recruiting new candidates—as many as twenty a year.
Procci says he regrets that SCPI has lost a generation of training analysts and teachers. It is now rebuilding, and younger members have the opportunity to move more quickly into positions of leadership. It has had the opportunity for thoughtful reflection in achieving major reforms. SCPI celebrated its forty-fifth anniversary in 1995 and now has about 170 members and a candidate group of forty.
The initial attempt to find common ground between LAPSI and SCPI began in 1957–58, with a panel about countertransference, their first joint effort. Successful joint meetings were occasionally held after that, but each institute went its separate way. However, some analysts maintained dual memberships. Apocryphally, site visitors from The American in the 1970s found more differences within each institute than between the institutes.
The most significant and meaningful joint venture was the sponsorship of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute. Beginning in the late sixties, leaders of both groups worked together, came to know each other, and developed mutual respect. The effort drew them together and was crowned with success when in 1977 San Diego became an institute of The American.
Mandel continues, “Times change, it moves on, old timers die off, environments alter.” Joint meetings have become more common. Most recently LAPSI and SCPI cosponsored a successful reception at The American's May meeting. Although cooperation between the two institutes is high, Procci says the “m” word, merger, is avoided in open discussions.
In June 1996 a joint meeting for the purpose of discussing closer ties between the two societies/institutes, was held. It was well-attended, and further action is expected in the fall. The steps are deliberately contemplated, the ground constantly felt.
Meanwhile the two LA independent IPA institutes, LAISPS and PCC, have joined with the two New York independent IPA institutes, the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and the Freudian Society, to form IPS, the Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies.
Cooperation has increased among LAPSI, SCPI, PCC, and LAISPS. They have formed FIPAS, the Federation of IPA Societies in Los Angeles. Mandel feels the formation has reignited excitement in the psychoanalytic community. FIPAS has sponsored two large programs. The first, held in January of this year, focused on the Freud-Ferenczi relationship, at which Andre Haynal was the featured speaker. Jonathan Lear was featured at the second. Procci says he finds this current cooperation in the local analytic milieu more appealing than the past history of psychoanalytic Balkanization.