Some crucial points are omitted from articles in TAP 30/3 about the efforts made to forestall cancellation of the Freud Exhibit at the Library of Congress and about the Jaffee v. Redmond decision. The omissions are startling and disheartening.
In both articles about the Freud Exhibit, only the work of The American is credited. There is absolutely no mention of the decisive individual and collaborative efforts of several other psychoanalytic organizations. Those organizations include not only the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association, but also the Psychoanalytic Consortium, of which The American is itself a member. The three other members of the Consortium are The American Academy of Psychoanalysis, The National Membership Committee on Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work, and of course the Division of Psychoanalysis (Division 39).
Under the circumstances, your members might be surprised to learn that action was initiated by the Division of Psychoanalysis. As president of Division 39, I wrote a strong letter for the division urging the Library of Congress to go ahead with the planned exhibit. That letter was circulated to the presidents of all the constituent organizations of The Psychoanalytic Consortium, including Judith Schachter and then-President-elect Marvin Margolis. All of them enthusiastically endorsed my sending a slightly modified version to the Library of Congress, and all of them signed it. I am enclosing a copy of that letter; the brief joint letter from the American Psychiatric Association and The American that was mentioned in one of the articles was sent sometime later. Soon after receiving the Division of Psychoanalysis and The Consortium letters, the associate librarian of Congress wrote to thank me for getting the ball rolling on the efforts to save the Freud Exhibit.
Otto F. Kernberg, IPA president-elect, is a training and supervising analyst at Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, professor of psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College, and director of the Personality Disorders Institute, New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, Westchester Division.
It is distressing to see that none of this is mentioned in your long and detailed articles about the Freud exhibit. It is as if The American singlehandedly saved the Freud exhibit from the depredations of controversy and small-mindedness. That the contribution—indeed, the leadership—of other organizations is so blatantly disregarded does not help stem the erosion of trust between The American and its allies in the Psychoanalytic Consortium, or for that matter its organizational counterparts in other parts of the world of psychoanalysis. That omitting the contribution of other psychoanalytic organizations to our common cause is not mere oversight is suggested by the fact that another example of our collaboration went unmentioned in the very same issue of your newsletter.
Thus, on the back page of TAP is an article about the Jaffee v. Redmond decision. The amici curiae brief filed by the Psychoanalytic Consortium in this case was one of the finest moments of psychoanalysis, in terms of the collaboration, both intellectual and financial, within the Consortium. Your article, however, derogates that significant achievement by a group of peer organizations by describing it as one in which “the American Psychoanalytic Association, together with three other organizations of psychoanalytic professionals” brought about the desired result. Such elision of the role of the Psychoanalytic Consortium, the relationship of The American to The Consortium, and the failure even to mention the names of the other organizations, is staggering in its offensiveness. The extent to which this issue of TAP suggests an aversion on the part of The American to the joint and collaborative activities to which it gives lip service is simply mind-boggling.
These days, one-sided visions of psychoanalytic history are especially reprehensible and ultimately unresponsive to the pressing need for accredited psychoanalysts of all persuasions to join together. Continuing the divisiveness that has been so destructive to psychoanalysis in the past will only contribute further to the fragmentation of our profession, undermining our effectiveness in advocating on own beliefs.
In our turbulent times, qualified psychoanalysts of all stripes and all organizational affiliations need to join forces to counter the politics and other external pressures that endanger our profession. Cannot The American honor its obligation to acknowledge its partnership with other psychoanalytic organizations and its participation in collaborative efforts with these organizations? Surely the time is past when The American ought to be representing itself as the solitary knight riding to the rescue of psychoanalysis in the United States.
On August 5, 1996, Robert Pyles, president-elect of The American, sent a letter to the members of the Psycho-analytic Consortium stating his strong belief that “by working together we can greatly magnify our effect,” citing Jaffee v. Redmond Supreme Court decision. I applaud Pyle's sentiment. Could we have more, please, of Pyles' attitude and less of that which implies that psychoanalysis belongs to, and is defended only by, the American Psychoanalytic Association?
Harriette Kaley is a past president of the Division (39) of Psychoanalysis of the APA, and professor emerita and adjunct professor at Brooklyn College-City University of New York. She is in private practice in New York and is senior editor of the forthcoming book, Psychoanalytic Treatment as Health Care.
Dr. Kaley and the members of the Consortium certainly deserve an apology that no mention was given in TAP of work of the Consortium in the successes of preserving the Freud Exhibit at the Library of Congress and in the Jaffee v. Redmond Supreme Court decision. This was an unfortunate error, and TAP regretes the oversight. What Kaley sostrongly advocates—eooperation with other psychoanalytic organizations—is the policy of The American and has been an ongoing theme in the pages of TAP. The American certainly does not claim all the credit; there is enough credit to go all around.