The Division of Psychoanalysis is one of fifty-two divisions of the American Psychological Association. While psychoanalysis and organized psychology (in the form of the APA) both came into existence roughly a hundred years ago, the relationship between the two has been less than optimal until about twenty years ago.
The APA was created in 1892, with forty-two members, both psychologists and philosophers. In its early years, the question of psychology's identity came in the form of whether or not it was related to philosophy or to the natural sciences. In 1901 the matter was seemingly resolved when the philosophers formed a splinter group, the American Philosophical Association.
Freud certainly had his influential champions in early psychology; he was introduced to America by G. Stanley Hall at Clark University in 1909. After Freud's visit, psychoanalysis began to flower in the United States, and following World War II it enjoyed a particularly vibrant existence. However, due to the medicalization of psychoanalysis in the United States by the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytical Association's recognition of the APsaA as the sole entry point through which institutes in the United States could join the IPA, psychoanalytic training was closed to most psychologists. Independent institutes that welcomed psychologists were established in the New York City metropolitan area (e.g., Adelphi University's Derner Institute, the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, the New York Freudian Society, the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, the William Alanson White Institute), but little was available across the country. At the same time, the American Psychological Association was growing and flourishing, but it had no strong, unified psychoanalytic voice.
In 1968, psychologist psychoanalysts began to explore establishing a national organization. Through the efforts of Reuben Fine, who became the first president of the Division of Psychoanalysis, organized psychology and psychoanalysis reached a turning point in 1979 when the American Psychological Association voted to establish a Division of Psychoanalysis (39). Today Division 39 enjoys a membership of 4,000, including fellows, associates, allied professionals, and students as well as regular members. We are the fifth largest division in the American Psychological Association, which now includes 159,000 members and is the worlds largest association of psychologists.
In the past twenty years the Division of Psychoanalysis has established itself as a leader within both the psychology community and the larger psychoanalytic community. Within psychology, the division and its members have held the Clark Conference on Psychoanalytic Training for Psychologists and published the proceedings, Tradition and Innovation in Psychoanalytic Education, in 1990; become a prominent part of APA governance; supported lawsuits filed by APA against managed care companies; secured diplomate status in psychoanalysis for our members through the American Board of Professional Psychology; and established psychoanalysis as a specialty in psychology, recognized by APA's Commission for the Recognition of Specialties and Proficiencies in Professional Psychology. One of our members, Bryant Welch, became the first director of APA's Practice Directorate, which launched the first major campaign against managed care and brought psychology into the legislative process.
Within the larger psychoanalytic community, we have initiated the lawsuit whose settlement resulting in opening membership in the APsaA to non-physicians and membership in the IPA to non-APsaA institutes; co-founded the Psychoanalytic Consortium and its Ethics Committee; launched a journal, Psychoanalytic Psychology, and a newsletter, Psychologist Psychoanalyst, made significant inroads in federal advocacy and public information; and held nineteen spring meetings that featured all varieties of psychoanalytic theory, fostered exchange and debate among these different theories, and been an avenue for the burgeoning voices of the interpersonal, intersubjective, and relational schools of psychoanalysis. We have invited our fellow Consortium members to participate at our annual meeting in April 2000 in San Francisco in a panel discussion, “The Future of Psychoanalytic Education: Can We All Work Together?”
Clearly the Division of Psychoanalysis straddles two cultures, that of psychology and that of psychoanalysis. Its mission within these two cultures is driven by the objectives of the division, as stated in our by-laws:
To broaden and enhance scientific contributions of psychoanalysis to psychology as a science and as a profession.
Laurel Bass Wagner
To encourage and support educational programs and research having to do with the discipline of psychoanalysis and its application to society.
To keep the psychological community and the public informed of research and other activity in psychoanalysis through the exchange of scientific ideas, meetings, and publications.
To increase public awareness of the benefits of psychoanalytic principles and treatment and the applicability of psychoanalytic thought to society as a whole.
To encourage and seek to maintain the highest standards for training in psychoanalysis as developed through the APA.
The Division of Psychoanalysis is an interest group. Any member of the American Psychological Association interested in psychoanalysis can join. Many of our members are institute-trained analysts; many are informally trained analysts; and many are psychoanalytic psychologists. In August 1998 we expanded our membership criteria to include non-psychologists. Licensed or certified mental health professionals who are psychoanalysts or interested in psychoanalysis may now join the division. The push for this inclusion of other mental health professions came in great part from our Section of Local Chapters. Division 38 has nine different sections; one of those, the Section of Local Chapters, includes thirty local chapters across the country. My own involvement in the Division of Psychoanalysis started at the local chapter level, where I was president of the Dallas Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology and its representative to the senate of the Section of Local Chapters. Interest in psychoanalysis continues to grow at the local level, as evidenced by the addition of two chapters, San Antonio and Kansas City, in 1999.
Laurel Bass Wagner, Ph.D., is president of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association. She is a clinical associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas and is in private practice in Dallas.
The Division of Psychoanalysis is committed to diversity and pluralism. We believe this commitment is our strength. In fact, it is more than a commitment; it is part of our identity. At the same time it can make the work of the division very complicated. We are a heterogeneous group. Our members come from independent institutes, institutes of the APsaA, institutes of the Independent Psychoanalytic Societies, institutes of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, and no institutes at all. We represent just about every theoretical framework.
Our organizational structure is horizontal rather than vertical. We have a nine-member executive committee, consisting of our president, president-elect, past-president, secretary, treasurer, and four representatives to APA Council. Our twenty-seven-member board of directors consists of our executive committee, nine members-at-large, and a representative from each of the nine sections.
The by-laws of the American Psychological Association prevent Division 39 itself from credentialing individuals and accrediting training programs. Regarding credentialing, we established a completely separate and incorporated board, the American Board of Psychoanalysis in Psychology (ABPsaP). This board is one of the specialty boards of the American Board of Professional Psychology. The ABPsaP is responsible for examining applicants, and in 1996 the board awarded “diplomate in psychoanalysis” status to more than seventy of our members.
Regarding accreditation, we can engage with other groups, for instance with the Consortium, to establish a separate National Accrediting Board in Psychoanalysis, of which we would be a part. Additionally, the option is available to pursue accreditation of postdoctoral psychoanalytic training programs in psychology (possibly including those that are multidisciplinary) through the APA's Committee on Accreditation, which is a Department of Education–approved accrediting agency.
Many independent institutes are identified with the Division of Psychoanalysis because they evolved from local chapters (e.g. the Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California) . These institutes are completely separate legal entities, but were founded by key members of the Division of Psychoanalysis and certainly have the support of the division, which at times awards money.
Many of our members are associated with independent institutes that have taken a thoughtful and theoretically sound position toward training somewhat different from that of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Many, but by no means all, reject the Berlin 1920 model as the best model for analytic training.
All of these institutes incorporate certain core standards, e.g. extensive coursework, supervised control cases, and a personal analysis. Many believe psychoanalysis is best served and analysts best trained without a training analyst system, leaving the candidate free to choose his or her analyst. Further, many of the independent institutes take the position that interrupting an analysis in order to be analyzed by a training analyst violates the cornerstone of psychoanalysis, namely the psychoanalytic process. Many have attempted to take a more democratic approach to analytic training, in which the candidate plays a more active role in determining the course of his or her training. Many innovative thinkers in psychoanalysis are associated with these institutes; among them are Lewis Aron, Jessica Benjamin, Philip Bromberg, Jay Greenberg, Adrienne Harris, Irwin Hoffman, Stephen Mitchell, Stuart Pizer, Charles Spezzano, and Robert Stolorow.
The Division of Psychoanalysis has a significant investment in maintaining the highest standards of training in psychoanalysis. To that end we are working with our fellow Consortium members to establish a set of standards that will be satisfactory to all involved and will reflect and represent the richness of diversity in psychoanalytic education. It is our hope and goal that we will reach an agreement that will allow the Consortium to move on to establishing an independent and autonomous National Accrediting Board in Psychoanalysis.
Clearly, the four member organizations of the Consortium have different organizational structures. The Division of Psychoanalysis represents a far more heterogeneous group than does the American Psychoanalytic Association; at times, this makes for differences in our approach to the work of the Consortium. The Division of Psychoanalysis represents pluralism and diversity. It is our belief that standards of psychoanalytic education must respect both tradition and diversity.