In his comments [TAP 32/3, page 36] on the previously published history of the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Institute's 1967 move from within the Western Reserve University Department of Psychiatry [TAP 32/1, page 37], Jacob Arlow referred to the temptation of victors to romanticize and mythologize. Like Arlow, I, too, was witness and participant in these events. He was chair of BOPS 1967–69; I was a candidate in the Cleveland Institute and a member of the department. I can attest that Arlow has based his conclusions on errors of fact, and any claim he might make to immunity from mythmaking is therefore suspect.

Arlow stated, “Each side had called in each candidate individually and had laid out before each one its own version of the conflict.” He did not cite the source of his information. No such meetings took place. Colleagues who were candidates at the time have confirmed this. In fact, prior to the eviction of members of the Educational Committee of the Institute from the department in August 1967, we candidates knew nothing about the dispute. Later in the fall of 1967, the story gradually emerged, and candidates were told of the events in group meetings called for that purpose. We were all shocked by the changes that greeted us when we resumed classes after the 1967 summer break: members of the Educational Committee forced to move their offices, the institute relocated outside the department, and two organizations claiming to be the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Institute. If the meetings Arlow mentioned had taken place, they would have been helpful.

Being able to testify only to what I witnessed, I cannot speak to other errors in Arlow's statement and Waltz's history. Arlow's account is — as he wrote of Waltz's — “characterized by serious omissions of relevant information.” As for Arlow's criticism of the Cleveland group, it is not surprising that a beleaguered Educational Committee would decline the offer of supervision of BOPS after the BOPS chair had accepted false information as truth.

Arthur L. Rosenbaum