After years of negotiation and discussion, the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis and the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute and Society have all voted now to heal the split that occurred in 1949, when the association split off from the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Society.
The society was founded in 1937. The new organization, which will be renamed the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, will use the original 1937 charter.
The major reason for the reunification is that analysts in Philadelphia believed they would be better off working together, pooling diminishing resources and manpower. The reunification's proposal elucidated a vision of an organization that puts psychoanalytic education as its central task but realizes in today's world that such activities as outreach, community education, and psychotherapy training are also vital to our survival.
Some work remains to be done, but Philadelphia analysts are well along the road to what they believe is an historical first, the healing of one of the many splits that occurred in psychoanalytic organizations around the world in the years just after World War II.
[Look in the next issue of TAP for details of the history behind the split in Philadelphia and the process of reunification.]
Alex Burland is one of the members of the Reunification Committee in Philadelphia.