I did an informal search of the websites of the American Psychological Association (APA) concerning its approved psychology doctoral and Psy.D. programs to get a sense of the extent that psychoanalytic or psychodynamic courses were included in its curricula. Limited as the investigation was, the territory looked discouragingly barren. I did discover, however, that in certain locales the psychology programs offered more psychoanalytic input, particularly New York City, Washington, D.C., and Michigan.
Edward Shafranske, co-chair for psychology of the APsaA's Committee on Graduate Education, writes that the committee
has sponsored two research projects to assess the current status of psychoanalysis in graduate psychology programs. The first study examined archival catalog data from a random sample of clinical psychology doctoral programs accredited by the American Psychological Association. The findings confirmed that psychoanalysis is under represented. Few programs include concentrations in psychoanalytic psychology and very few count psychoanalysts among their faculty.
Shafranske's second project, which was to be administered in late 2001, is a survey to examine clinical psychology graduate students' knowledge of and exposure to psychoanalysis and their attendant attitudes and beliefs.
As the first group of surveys makes clear, for several decades few psychology doctoral programs have espoused or included psychoanalytic ideas, and few analysts have participated in the programs. Instead, the teaching of even the shadow of psychoanalytic ideas is, by and large, in a different venue. No longer the domain of Ph.D.-granting psychology doctoral programs, such teaching, irrespective of quality, is primarily the realm of the professional schools of psychology that award Psy.D. degrees. This creates a divide between imparting knowledge of a general psychological nature, including research skills, from knowledge and experience of a clinical nature, which may include developmental ideas, psychopathology, and psychological testing.
Not surprisingly, Division 39, the Division of Psychoanalysis of the APA, has been concerned about these matters for some ten years, according to Ruth Ochroch, a psychologist/psychoanalyst involved in academia for fifty years. Division 39 members have also undertaken surveys, beginning with the efforts of Spyros Orfanos, a past president of Division 39, to study doctoral training.
The results of this and other surveys have led the Division 39 leadership to conclude that the division needs to find ways to advocate for and influence undergraduate and graduate curricula, to make psychoanalysis more accessible to the public, and to expand the thinking of psychoanalytic psychologists toward offering the community their skills outside the consultation room.
The next step in this inquiry was to interview psychologist/psychoanalysts who are faculty members in programs that are more developed psychoanalytically.
I spoke to Hedda Bolgar, who has supervised students graduating from the California School of Professional Psychology in Los Angeles. She found CSPP-LA similar to other psychology programs that purport to teach psychoanalytic ideas or at least give passing reference to them. When students of these programs are questioned, however, it becomes clear that many have little understanding of these concepts. Only if an instructor happens to be an analyst, or perhaps a knowledgeable, psychoanalytically oriented therapist, do students actually learn anything of use on the topic.
Bolgar sees such teaching as “accidental islands.” On the other hand, she points out that those students given any exposure to psychoanalytic concepts often wish to learn more. At the California-School, the student may have an analytic supervisor who alerts the student to the literature and to a psychoanalytically receptive internship where the student can receive further exposure to analytic concepts.
The Psychology Department at the University of Michigan, according to James Hansell, was until approximately fifteen years ago a stronghold of psychoanalytic thinking. At that time the department became a smaller, more eclectic, more research-oriented program. The analytic faculty members were replaced and psychoanalytic theory reduced to a modest component, as the clinical program began to focus on life historical issues and behavioral and family systems.
Nevertheless, even with these dramatic changes of emphasis, there are some positive aspects, particularly at an internship site that continues to be psychoanalytic and effective. Hansell explained that one-third of all the clinical students rotate through the university's psychological clinic and are exposed to psychoanalytic ideas through psychoanalysts' supervision and training.
Kim Leary, the associate director of the clinic, added to the optimistic picture, explaining that the clinic has been conducting psychoanalytic research on the therapeutic alliance, under the leadership of its director of the last decade, analyst Robert Hatcher. The clinic is publishing articles in journals of the APA — normally read by research-oriented psychologists — and is creating a body of work from projects where one article builds on the findings in another. As the clinic broadens its psychoanalytic perspective to include interpersonal and relational ideas, students are gaining in enthusiasm. These students differ from their predecessors at the clinic in that they intend
Harriet I. Basseches, Ph.D., is a training and supervising analyst and faculty member of the New York Freudian Society, where she was president in 1996–98. She was co-chair of the IPS in 1997–99 and is a member of TAP's editorial board.
to pursue research rather than clinical careers, but their exposure to psychoanalytic ideas invites continued interest.
One more note from Hansell: He and a colleague have received funding to write a textbook for undergraduates. Instead of a purely behavioral/symptom orientation, his textbook will include what he calls “stealth psychoanalysis.”
We know that New York has long been a mecca for psychoanalysis. Many of the psychological doctoral programs in the New York City area opened in the 1960s. Most of those were strongly psychoanalytic. Today many of these programs have followed the national trend toward emphasis on (non-psychoanalysis-friendly) research. Others seem uncertain of their direction. However, some strong, psychoanalytically receptive programs are still thriving, such as those at Adelphi, City University, and Long Island University–Brooklyn Center. Those that are thriving seem propelled by having psychoanalysts as faculty, such as Marvin Hurvich at LIU.
These programs have come to maturity, however, and over the next few years, as leadership faculty retire (for example, George Goldman at Adelphi and Steven Ellman at City), the psychoanalytic orientation in New York doctoral programs may be challenged.
In some respects, this picture may follow a similar trajectory to that of psychiatric centers from the 1950s through the 1970s. During this period the arc of public policy support shifted away from psychoanalysis even as the budding psychological interest was blossoming.
Although many of the professional schools with responsibility for clinical training are unsympathetic or superficial in their treatment of psychoanalysis, at least one Psy.D. program is different. In Washington, D.C., at George Washington University, James Miller heads what might be characterized as a model psychoanalytically informed program. The members of the core faculty are psychoanalysts, and supervisors are psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically oriented therapists.
The program developed from a previously successful psychodynamic track of the university's doctoral psychology program. The president of the university, Stephen J. Trachtenberg, encouraged its creation, perhaps for economic reasons. Moving from its first class in 1996 to full APA accreditation in 2001, the program graduates approximately forty students per year, the largest numbers of any program in GWU's School of Arts and Sciences.
GWU's Psy.D. program replaces a dissertation with a case-based project, from which each student masters in-depth understanding and writes a publishable paper. These students, exposed to a broad range of psychoanalytic ideas, have practical experience in their psychotherapy and testing work — and for some, through their own treatments. Some go on to psychoanalytic training. The Psy.D. program at GWU seems to meet all the criteria that would support a psychoanalytically informed psychology program: curricula, faculty, student learning, and the support of the funding institution.
Psychology graduate training includes a genuine psychoanalytic component in only a very few programs in a few locations. The new program in Washington provides a basis for optimism and a model for emulation.