The IPA leadership can justly feel proud of its tradition of supporting psychoanalytic research. Robert Wallerstein was president of the IPA when research half-days were made a prominent part of its congress held every two years. Joseph Sandler and Horacio Etchegoyen both advanced this tradition by establishing an annual research conference, a Standing Conference on Psychoanalytic Research, and a research training program for psychoanalysts. It was part of Otto Kernberg's manifesto to offer financial support to psychoanalysts who wish to initiate research programs. Under Wallersteiris chairmanship, the Kernberg/Tyson administration established a Research Advisory Board (RAB), charged with the responsibility to distribute $200,000 annually to applicants with serious interests in systematic research with a psychoanalytic focus.
Is this support justified? The research committee recently carried out a survey of more than 300 psychoanalysts with an interest in research around the world. The results indicate that 80 percent of them have had serious difficulty obtaining funding for their work. Experienced researchers, quite as much as those just starting along this rocky road, reported that national and international funding bodies and research-oriented private foundations were increasingly unsympathetic to applications whose central focus was psychoanalytic treatment or psychoanalytic ideas.
There are obvious exceptions to this. However, the responses made clear that without a clear commitment by the psychoanalytic community, systematic research into psychoanalytic process and ideas cannot take place. Such key questions as the expected outcomes of psychoanalytic treatment with different patient groups will remain unanswered unless information is systematically collected and integrated from relatively large samples across a number of sites.
Clinical psychoanalysts have been supremely effective hypothesis generators, contributing an unparalleled richness of ideas — not just to the study of mental health and mental disorder but also to the study of literature, the arts, social policy, and history. Traditionally at least, they have been less successful in devising procedures that might assist in identifying which one of a number of competing explanations is the most adequate for a given outcome. This has led to a fragmentation of the field of psychoanalysis that has been evident in Europe and Latin America for many years and is an increasingly central issue within North American psychoanalysis.
What is the funding for? It is a common misperception that the IPA funds only empirical psychiatric or psychological research. While many of the applications to the RAB have come from this tradition, a significant portion of funding has been given to historical, conceptual, educational, and even legal research. The composition of the RAB speaks to this diversity, including as it does some of the most prominent contributors to the history of our field, the philosophy of our ideas, and our educational structures, as well as work on psychological development, the effectiveness of psychoanalysis, and the process of psychic change.
The criteria used by the RAB are simple. Will the research proposed contribute to psychoanalytic knowledge, and if so, will it clearly benefit from the kind of limited funding the IPA can provide?
Many researchers have complained that the funding offered by the IPA was inadequate to the task required. It is the RAB's policy to offer no more than $10,000 to any single project in. any one year. Thus, while large-scale projects cannot be funded, the funding may be judiciously used to encourage work in various geographical areas by a significant number of individuals and research groups. It is remarkable what a contribution such small sums of money can make. In reality, researchers for the most part donate their own time to projects, and the IPA gets quite exceptional value for its money. These relatively small amounts of funding can maintain active psychoanalytic research groups in Latin America and central Europe, as well as ostensibly far less deprived areas such as Germany, England, and the United States.
Because of the relatively longer history and experience of North American scholarship, research skills, and “grantsmanship,” members of the APsaA have thus far received a relatively large number of IPA research awards. For example, in the second round of applications (in April 1998), North America received eight of the eleven awards made.
Is this unfair? The decision is made through a peer review process. At least three referees read each “blind” application and independently give a rating on a scale of one to five. The pressure for funding is such that only applications that repeatedly receive top ranking from all three referees are likely to be offered funding. It is reassuring that the level of agreement between reviewers of applications has been remarkably high (over 80 percent). Following the peer review process, the research committee oversees the offers of funding and establishes priorities based on research topics, seniority of applicants, or geographic considerations. For example, in the initial round of applications, research focusing on the outcome of psychoanalytic treatment was given priority. More recently, the committee wished to underscore its commitment to the diversity of research methodology that characterizes psychoanalytic research work.
Three rounds of funding have been completed so far and thirty-six projects funded. The number of applications were initially overwhelming, indicating a thirst for funding in the research community. The odds of being funded have improved over the two years of the RAB's existence, from one in nine to one in four or five. Nevertheless, it is highly likely that because of the backlog many highly deserving projects will not be funded at first application.
The Research Committee recognizes that funding for research in itself will not create a psychoanalytic research community. For this to flourish, research training and the networking of researchers must also be attended to. Each summer for the last five years, six eminent psychoanalytic researchers have given ten days of their time to contribute to the Psychoanalytic Research Training Programme (RTP) in London. By August 1999, more than 100 individuals will have participated in this intensive but highly enjoyable opportunity to discuss their research plans with experts in the field and with each other. Under Robert Emde's leadership, the Research Training Programme has grown into a College of IPA Research Fellows with current and past faculty and graduates of the program. The faculty over the years has included Otto
Peter Fonagy, Ph.D., chairs the IPA Committee on Psychoanalytic Research.
Kernberg, Stuart Hauser, Wilma Bucci, Enrico Jones, and Joy Osofsky. The current head of the program is John Clarkin from Cornell.
Program participants are not students in any real sense. Many are senior colleagues who wish to sharpen their research skills and combine their vast clinical experience with modern methods of systematizing data collection. George Klumpner was with us in the first RTP, and Anni Bergman participated in 1997. The RTP is a great leveler in a profession often overly dominated by hierarchies. Presidents of societies and directors of institutes work, contribute, and learn side-by-side with junior colleagues and candidates. In our experience, everybody has an enjoyable time. Networking and continued support of research is a central aim. Past participants attend special meetings organized in connection with research conferences or the IPA Congress. The committee has set up and maintains a library of psychoanalytic research instruments available to all IPA members. The library, which continues to grow, now contains more than 100 research instruments, mostly contributed by RTP faculty.
The integration of information on research is actively pursued, not just through conferences and informal meetings but also in substantive reports compiled by members of the Research Committee. The first report, summarizing research on outcomes and process, has now been produced and is available both in printed form at cost from the editor's office (e-mail ) and on the Internet via the IPA Web site (). The document is not supposed to offer a definitive summary. It is a work in progress, an open-door review. We anticipate including new results in this collection as these are reported or made known to us.
The IPA is institutionally committed to furthering psychoanalytic research. As an organization it is ideally suited to support research activity, which is by its very nature international, multi-site, and collaborative. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how else, except through international collaboration, we would be able to make significant progress in increasing our understanding of such an intensive and long-term method of intervention.
The IPA Research Committee was recently honored by an award from the Mary S. Sigourney Trust for outstanding contribution to psychoanalysis (see page 12). The current and past members of the committee were gratified by this honor. It spurs us on energetically to pursue our aim to promote and broaden the impact of psychoanalytic ideas in a culture that we perceive as often hostile to our convictions unless these are supported by the fruits of systematic study.