Unhappily, Elise Snyder's excellent interview with Robert Pyles [TAP 33/4, page 14] was marred by two significant errors about the relationship between the American and the IPA. Having been president of both (the American 1971–72 and the IPA 1985–89), and being well acquainted with the often troubled relationship between the two, I want to offer two corrections.
The statement, “The IPA has a much shorter route for establishing training programs than we do,” implies that it is therefore less rigorous. Though the sponsorship modes are different, it is not true that the IPA process is “much shorter.” The modal time in the IPA from Study Group to Component Society is ten years; in one unhappy situation it has been more than twenty-five years. The American and the IPA cannot be differentiated on this basis.
My other emendation is more consequential. Concerning meetings at the IPA congresses between IPA officers and officers of the component societies, Bob Pyles stated, “Their presidents [European and Latin American] have always been invited to IPA meetings, and our presidents haven't. Now the IPA has agreed to invite our presidents too.” I want to correct the mistaken idea that it was the IPA, rather than the American, that had been blocking direct communication. The fact is that the American's officers have always insisted that the American's affiliate societies not be contacted directly by the IPA, since APsaA societies are not IPA component societies, and their members only held IPA membership through their membership in the American, not through membership in one of the American's societies.
All this has a long and contentious history codified at the 1963 IPA congress. The IPA formally created the special regional association status for the American (with special privileges, including total autonomy, and full control over training), which the American demanded as the price of not seceding from the IPA on the eve of World War II.
Currently there is real eagerness to bridge the previous divisions. The IPA has welcomed the willingness of the American's officers to allow the IPA direct communication access to the American's societies — such as the invitation to which Bob Pyles referred.
Robert Wallerstein
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