For most, Birmingham, Ala., evokes images of the civil rights battles of the 1960s. More than thirty years later, the heir to that civil strife is the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, dedicated to tolerance and the promotion of civil rights. Planning is under way to involve the institute in hosting a conference later this year on psychoanalytic contributions to understanding racial issues.
Birmingham has grown in other ways as well. Though the city was once known as the “Pittsburgh of the South,” the steel mills that once blackened its skies are all but closed as the economy has shifted to service industries. The city's largest employer is now the University of Alabama at Birmingham, with its growing medical center, internationally recognized for clinical care and research. The cultural life of the city revolves around the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Stephens Center for the Performing Arts. Birmingham is also home to the Alabama Symphony and the Alabama Ballet. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, in nearby Montgomery, offers year-round professional productions, with performers recruited from around the country.
As the city has matured, an analytic presence has become increasing visible. Lee Ascherman came to Birmingham from the Menninger Clinic to develop the training program in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 1993, he began adult and child analytic training at the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Institute. His training by commute was encouraged and supported by the Department of Psychiatry. In 1996, Stephen Kowalski, a recent graduate of the child and adult programs of the Topeka Psychoanalytic Institute, joined the psychoanalytic immigration to Birmingham and established a private practice. A third analyst is in the the process of moving to the Birmingham area.
The Birmingham Psychoanalytic Study Group was established in 1996 by a group of local practitioners. The group has a membership of approximately fifteen psychiatrists and psychologists from the area who meet monthly to discuss psychoanalytic topics and readings. Almost all the members teach and/or supervise residents in the Department of Psychiatry.
Birmingham was identified in 1997 as one of four potential new psychoanalytic centers by APsaA's Ad Hoc Committee for New Psychoanalytic Centers (CNPC). It has quickly established itself as the most organized and fastest-growing of these sites. Practice opportunities abound in Birmingham. The population is affluent, educated, and surprisingly psychologically minded, and Alabama has one of the lowest percentages of managed-care incursions in the country. Fee-for-service practice remains common.
Lee Shershow, chair of the CNPC, and co-chairs Richard Ruzumna and Alan Sugarman visited Birmingham on several occasions in 1997 and 1998. Their initial visit was sponsored by the American Psychoanalytic Foundation's Visiting Professor Program. During that visit, in addition to meeting with the Birmingham Psychoanalytic Study Group and community practitioners, Ruzumna and Sugarman taught general and child and adolescent psychiatry residents and Ruzumna gave a Department of Psychiatry grand rounds.
CNPC has also encouraged outreach to community agencies. Birmingham Jewish Family Services has developed a consultation relationship with Sugarman and Ascherman, and the agency recently held a community workshop on applied analysis that was well attended. Other initiatives include planning for a psychoanalytically oriented therapeutic preschool to be established through collaboration between the Department of Psychiatry's Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and a regional school system. The study group has also received a significant donation of the personal library of a retiring analyst from New York and the promise of an additional library from a senior analyst in New Orleans. A local foundation committed to mental health issues recently awarded the study group a grant to help develop the library and to promote the introduction of analytic speakers to the community.
Several analytic speakers came to the area during the past several years to give grand rounds at the university and/or meet with the study group. These have included Lawrence Inderbitzin, Lawrence Kennedy, Glen Gabbard, Bonnie Buchele, Alice Brand Bartlett, and Sybil Ginsburg.
At this point the study group is eager to recruit a geographic rule training analyst (GRTA) to Birmingham. Several individuals in the study group are interested in initiating their formal analytic training but want to have their training analysis in Birmingham. This emphasis on local training is consistent with the new policies of the Committee on New Training Facilities. Psychoanalytic istitutes in the region have indicated a strong interest in sponsoring a new training facility in Birmingham. Thus, all that is needed at this point is a GRTA.
The CNPC is actively working to assist the study group in its search for a training analyst to help lead this emerging psychoanalytic community. Any potential GRTA should contact Shershow, Sugarman, Ruzumna, or Ascherman. The opportunities for practice and training are outstanding in Birmingham.
Lee Ascherman, M.D., is a candidate in adult and child analysis at the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Institute and director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Alan Sugarman, Ph.D., is a training and supervising analyst and director of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute.