This year is the eighth of the American's Fellowship Program, with its mission of keeping psychoanalysis alive in psychiatry, psychology, and social work. The program has nurtured 137 future leaders in education, research, policy, and organizational work and supported more than 630 applicants through the assignment of local mentors. From its inception, the program's aim has not been to recruit future psychoanalysts but rather to encourage in winners as well as non-winners an appreciation for and commitment to psychoanalytic ideas and practice with which they will continue to exert influence on a great number of others throughout their professional lives.
What has become of these future leaders since their year as Fellows of the American Psychoanalytic Association? A recent survey reveals that they continue to be involved with psychoanalysis and that their influence is being felt in academic and research centers around the country. Of those former fellows who responded to the survey, 65 percent are teaching using a psychoanalytic orientation, 35 percent engage in other organizational activities informed by a psychodynamic understanding, 47 percent are engaged in original research, 35 percent have been instrumental in creating clinical programs, and 61 percent reported they attended APsaA meetings since completing their fellowships. Fifty-nine percent have pursued training to become psychoanalysts; 27 percent of all respondents are engaged in psychoanalytic psychotherapy training, while 29 percent participate in local institute, society, or foundation committees. Interestingly, 70 percent report that the Fellowship influenced their career choice and 100 percent report encouraging others to apply! Sixty-seven percent are currently in psychoanalysis, and others hope to be in the future.
Former fellows known to members of the American through their important organizational and scientific contributions, including Kimberly Leary (1994–95), Susan Vaughn (1992–93), and Sandra Walker (1994–95), are active in a variety of arenas. Leary is the Associate Director of the University of Michigan Psychological Clinic, Vaughn has lectured widely in connection with her book The Talking Cure, and Walker is engaged with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce/Urban Enterprise Center Forum on Race as well as the Washington State Association of Black Professionals in Health Care — which, she notes, “presents opportunities to represent and promote psychoanalysis.”
Peter Graham (1997–98) is the project director of the Adult Outcomes Project, Clinical Protocols and Outcomes, at the Menninger Clinic as well as a member of the teaching faculty at the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry and the Mental Health Sciences in Topeka. He is currently studying the effectiveness of psychoanalysis and supportive-expressive psychodynamic psychotherapy as practiced in the everyday work of the Menninger Clinic. His work was presented last summer in a symposium with other former Fellows Mark Hilsenroth (see below) and Chris Fowler at the American Psychological Association in Boston.
Robert Cohen (1996–97) developed and coordinates an undergraduate degree program in mental health with a strong psychoanalytic base (with a master's degeree program soon to be added) at Madonna University in Livonia, Mich., where he is an associate professor of psychology. Cohen organized and coordinates the discussion group on undergraduate education at the APsaA annual meetings and continues his forensic work with children and adults. Louis Kraus (1992–93), the Division Head of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, recently co-edited a book, The Scientific Study of Custody Decisions. Paulo Negro, Jr. (1997–98), is a visiting Associate/Clinical Research Fellow at the Clinical Neuroendocrinology Branch of NIMH, where he is exploring somatic consequences of affective disorders utilizing neuroimaging. His recent paper “Nature of Dissociation Experience Related to Religious Practice” investigates social control of dissociative behavior in a non-pathological population.
Anne Adelman (1995–96), in collaboration with the New Haven, Conn., police department, has developed a program for families and children with HIV. She also does research with children who have witnessed violence or experienced trauma. Rachel Conrad (1995–96) is an assistant professor of psychology at Hampshire College in New Hampshire, where she incorporates psychoanalytic ideas into teaching undergraduates and recently began a research project in maternal subjectivity.
Tim Visscher (1997–98) plans to return to Montana when he completes his child psychiatry fellowship at the University of Massachusetts. There he is slated to work in a community mental health center as well as serve as a consultant on child and adult psychiatric issues to local Native American reservations. Mark Hilsenroth (1997–98), a Department of Psychology associate professor at the University of Arkansas, pursues extensive research interests in personality assessment and treatment outcomes while teaching and developing curriculum at the undergraduate level. He recently initiated an ambitious multidimensional study using measures of clinical assessment and psychotherapy process in relation to the outcome of treatment in the Psychology Clinic at the University.
Rosemary Kelly (1996–97) is a NIMH research fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California–Davis, where she investigates women's reproductive health issues including psychiatric illness during pregnancy and postpartum. She hopes to continue developing a women's clinic incorporating psychodynamic principles. Stephen Kubacki (1996–97) is the coordinator of clinical training and a core faculty member of the Washington School of Psychology, a new professional school. He recently published “Comparing Values and Methods in Psychodynamic and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Commonalities and Differences” in the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration.
Doane Motsinger Rising (1995–96) is a community psychiatrist with an Asian counseling clinic serving Laotian, Cambodian, and Vietnamese refugee populations as well as college students from China and Japan. Ashok Bharucha (1996–97), an assistant professor of psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School, researches insights into hastened deaths. Miles Ardaman (1997–98) incorporates an analytic understanding in his biopsychosocial approach to teaching family practice residents in his position as staff psychiatrist at Self Memorial Hospital in Greenwood, S.C.. Pamela Wine (1997–98) is the Associate Director for Medical Student Education in Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine. As a newly appointed medical school teacher in psychiatry there, she reports that her classes will “surely be informed by a psychoanalytic viewpoint.”
B. James Bennett (1993–94) pursues interests in outcome research and early intervention through his involvement in school-based health efforts. He focuses on development and training as a consultant in a community mental health Early Education Program serving children six years old and under, as well as in the Dallas Independent School District youth and family clinics. Rachel Seidel (1991–92) teaches development and psychopathology to psychiatric residents at Cambridge Hospital and is active in the International Psychoanalytic Students Organization, where she is Vice-President Elect for North America. Justin Richardson (1993–94) is the founder and director of the Columbia Center in New York City, which provides analytically informed psychodynamic
psychotherapy to gay and bisexual individuals. He has published essays on medicine, science, and society in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Geoffrey Goodman (1995–96) is an academician on the psychology faculty at Cornell University Medical College, where he has completed extensive research in mother-child interactional processes, clinical and developmental outcomes, and an examination of attachment patterns and relations between internal and external working models with disturbed prepubertal psychiatric patients who exhibit internalizing and externalizing behaviors. In addition, Goodman has organized a group therapy program with inner-city children and has published widely in Infant Mental Health Journal, Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders, the Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, and the Journal of the Society for Research in Child Development.
Craig Tomlinson (1994–95) served as an editorial associate of JAPA while working at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. He has written several book reviews for the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis and recently published “Sandor Rado and Adolf Meyer: A Nodal Point in American Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis” in that journal. He pursues psychiatric outreach activities through the New York District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association.
Maj. Michael Doyle, USAF (1996–97) commands the 98th Medical Detachment (Combat Stress Control) in Fort Lewis, Wash., a twenty-four-person unit charged with the prevention and treatment of battle fatigue. Serving both commanders and soldiers, his primary responsibilities include treatment and prevention coordination for combat, as well as training and preparedness for any mission in war or peace, humanitarian operations, and/or operations other than war including unit tragedies such as accidents, death, suicide, or terrorist bombing. Recently, Major Doyle developed two pilot studies to assess the effectiveness of prospective and retrospective interventions on battle fatigue.
Daniel Schecter (1995–96) was recently named medical director of the Therapeutic Nursery at Babies Hospital in New York City, where he is charged with the task of developing, in liaison with the department of pediatrics, an evaluation service within the department of psychiatry for children younger than seven years old and their parents. There he also plans to continue clinical research looking at the relationship of disruptive behavior in young children to attachment disorders, parental trauma, and mental representations. A Presidential Scholar of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Schecter spent last summer in London as a fellow at the IPA summer Research Program.
Also in New York, Mary Theodore (1995–96) is starting a non-profit organization to consult in international relations, conflict resolution, and peacekeeping. She conducts research into ethnic violence and genocide and presented a paper on her work at the International Psychoanalytical Congress in Chile. Lucy Puryear (1995–96) an assistant professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine, is the Director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry and Director of the University's Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic. She does research into women's reproductive psychiatric disorders — currently the role of omega-3 fatty acids in postpartum depression.
At the American's 1998 Fall Meeting in New York, Scott Bunce (1997–98) presented his research which used neurophysiologic testing to empirically support important psychoanalytic hypotheses. His work confirms that although motivated to achieve pleasure, individuals who have suffered early loss cannot experience positive emotions as rewarding. This makes them vulnerable to depression and results empirically in limited intimacy, less satisfying relationships, and later marriages for those who have suffered the early loss of a loved one.
As the Fellowship Program looks ten to fifteen years into the future, its sponsors hope to insure that there will be psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers throughout the country who are favorably disposed to psychoanalysis and who will be leaders as training directors, departmental chairmen, researchers, scholars, and community activists. Clearly our former fellows are well on their way to achieving this goal!