In the beginning there were discoveries: the dynamic unconscious mind, mental conflict, the susceptibility of dreams and parapraxes to interpretation, the roles of pleasure and unpleasure, forces in the mind emerging as wishful impulses to satisfaction, forces opposing those impulses and the distressing feelings they generated, and much more. Psychoanalysis was a theory, a treatment, and a research tool.
Discovery in the consulting room went on for a long time; it still does. Eventually, though, psychoanalysis began to suffer from a superfluity of discoveries for which there was a lack of evidence convincing to anyone who had no experience in the consulting room. Schools of psychoanalytic thought proliferated and acquired adherents while the rest of the world moved on to “evidence based” treatment on the platform of a reliable diagnostic system. Justification—the invention of methods to sort systematically between competing hypotheses—has been an arena which psychoanalysts, for the most part, have been reluctant to enter.
Systematic research struggled to obtain a footing in our Association and in our educational system. Support for systematic studies from public sources became scarcer because we did not already have an extensive portfolio of systematic studies when related disciplines did. There were at least three attempts to give science, in this sense, a place in the governance and financial structure of our organization. One of them resulted in the formation of the Fund for Psychoanalytic Research, which remains a linchpin in our scientific efforts. But psychoanalysis continued to suffer, as a profession and as a science, from a relative paucity of systematic research, despite heroic efforts by leaders like Luborsky. Wallerstein, Dahl, Shevrin, Bucci and others.
The Omnibus Science Initiative (OSI), approved by the Council and BOPS in May 2000, consisted of a package of recommendations. The OSI task force intended to find ways to (1) enhance the position of systematic scientific efforts in APsaA without attempting yet again to alter the organizational structure and (2) provide a consistent and pervasive voice for science in our affairs, a meaningful role in our educational processes, and a stronger position in our scientific programs and journals. The task force felt it was essential to do this without by-laws changes and without major financial impact on the rest of the Association.
The OSI contained nine recommendations for action. Not all of the action items worked out, but the five that endured have not only grown but produced offspring. OSI tried to give systematic science a platform—or at least stepping stones—to work from within our Association, hoping that the value and practicability of formal science would be more widely perceived and its influence would spread.
Now, three years after initiating OSI, a progress report is in order.
The appointment of a science advisor as a sitting (though non-voting) member of Council and of the Executive Committee was initially met with skepticism. After a few months with Bob Galatzer-Levy in place, not only was the science advisor seen as a valuable contributor, but also the Board wanted a science advisor of its own to sit with the Board and the Coordinating Committee. BOPS combined the position of science advisor with that of the chair of the Committee on Research Education (CRED), appointing Stuart Hauser and Bob Emde as co-advisors and co-chairs. Between them, they are working with Board committees on Certification, Child and Adolescent Analysis, and Institutes to enhance considerations of reliability and validity and integrate research courses and research itself into institute curricula. The science advisor positions and CRED give science a voice consistently present at the highest levels of decisionmaking. This voice is beginning to be heard at the most basic level of our field: education in institutes.
The amalgamation of the OSI research associates, a new affiliated group, with the longstanding research forum CAMP (Collaborative Analytic Multisite Projects), is progressing well, guided by Wilma Bucci as chair.
Under the leadership of Linda Mayes, the Fund for Psychoanalytic Research has taken new directions. It has continued the Herculean task of reviewing grant applications and awarding the funds made available by Council and by members' direct contributions; it also is becoming more transparent, more inviting, more user-friendly recognizing the opportunity to support young scholars and provide a consultative body for more experienced investigators. A good example of everything the OSI intended can be seen at the Fund's Web site, .
The editor of TAP recognized the value of keeping our scientific efforts in the members' view and asked Steve Portuges to initiate a column on psychoanalytic science which appears in most issues of TAR The Public Information Committee appointed a science liaison to smooth the flow of science related information to public media.
The Committee on Scientific Activities, chaired by Beth Seelig, has altered its emphasis from carrying out scientific projects to providing a forum for scientific issues within the Association, then spinning off subcommittees to carry out appropriate projects: Archives (chaired by George Klumpner), Research Symposia
Allan Compton, M.D., is president of the Los Angeles Center for Psychoanalytic Research.
(Robert Waldinger), Privacy and Ethical Issues in Psychoanalytic Research (Robert Galatzer-Levy), Science Paper Prizes (Robert Michels), Scientific Survey Research (Lee Brauer), and the poster section.
The poster section, co-chaired by Linda Goodman and Linda Mayes, is perhaps the most dramatic change resulting from the OSI to date. It is safe to say that among scientific organizations of any size, only APsaA did not offer an opportunity at national meetings to display posters of research work until 2001. Submissions for the poster section of our meetings have been numerous and of high quality, coming from both experienced and beginning researchers. In New York in January 2003, spot counts revealed attendance as follows: at 2:30, forty people viewed the poster section; at 3:00, ninety-three; at 3:30, 125; at 4:30, more than sixty. From these data and frequent personal expression by members, we conclude that reception of the poster section has been enthusiastic and widespread.
The committee responsible for the Omnibus Science Initiative has every hope that APsaA's scientific activities will eventually make a significant contribution to the Association's activities and to psychoanalysis in the United States.