There is increasing interest in innovative research methods and programs within the psychoanalytic community. There is also increasing evidence of confluence between a number of branches of natural and social sciences and psychoanalytic ideas when the latter are placed in an empirical context. Our psychoanalytic culture benefits from such interdisciplinary input; research ideas have an invigorating effect on clinicians; ideas originating in the clinical realm have the potential to inform scientific research.
The increasing relevance of research to the status of practicing clinicians has created a groundswell of demand for opportunities both to conduct and to learn of high-quality research on the part of individual clinicians, particularly young people at the early stages of their psychoanalytic and professional careers.
The fund began in 1976 as an organization within the American Psychoanalytic Association. The fund supports and nurtures psychoanalytic investigative scholars and facilitates investigative inquiry based on psychoanalytic theory and principles of mental functioning.
The fund is supported by donations from APsaA members and through a regular allocation in the yearly budget of the Association. It awards two to three grants yearly, including smaller consultation grants.
All members of the fund's board are members of the American Psychoanalytic Association and are involved in psychoanalytic research as primary investigators or as consultants and informed scholars. Scholars who are not APsaA members and who may or may not be psychoanalysts also serve as consultants to the fund on its mission and the review of grant applications.
Many well-established psychoanalytic investigators were early grantees of the fund. Judy Kantrowitz received a grant in 1976 for her studies of analytic suitability and fit. Investigators who have benefited from fund grants have ranged from the most senior and experienced to the most junior scholars interested in psychoanalysis and trying to bring rigorous methods to questions of enormous relevance for psychoanalysis.
A recent awardee, Kristine Freeark, is studying relationships within families with international adoptees, a line of work that focuses on parental expectations and interactions and draws attention to the internal landscape of family dynamics. Ken Levy, another recent grantee, studies clinical processes related to therapeutic outcomes in psychodynamic psychotherapy for borderline personality disorders. Funded studies cover both investigations of therapeutic process and technique, such as Annette DeMichele's project on a method for assessing patient work in the transference, and the application of psychoanalytic theory and methods to developmental questions, such as Robert Waldinger's work on continuity and change in relationship themes in adolescence.
Since the fund's inception, it has awarded 111 grants. The names of the principal investigators and the titles of their projects may be found on the fund's Web site at http://www.apsa-co.org/ctf/ffpr/. Within a year the site will offer a bibliography of research reports and scholarly papers that have emerged from the projects supported by the fund. Here APsaA members will be able to see the range and depth of work that their contributions to the fund have supported.
The goals of the fund are four:
To support basic and applied research involving psychoanalytic perspectives and observations.
To support young scholars interested in psychoanalytic research.
To provide psychoanalytic scholars an opportunity to consult with experienced investigators around an idea, methodological issue, or existing dataset.
To provide opportunities for beginning psychoanalytic investigators to meet individually and as a group with experienced investigators.
The fund conceives of psychoanalytic research along the broadest lines, including scholarly and empirical investigative contributions that can advance (1) knowledge of psychoanalytic theory and practice and (2) links between psychoanalysis and neighboring disciplines such as developmental psychology or neuroscience. The scope of this research includes (but is not limited to):
Systematic research into psychoanalytic treatment processes and outcomes, including the development of reliable and valid measures of appropriate variables related to process and outcome.
Developmental studies including experimental and naturalistic investigations of infant and child development or adult development.
Psychophysiological and other experimental studies and other relevant social science studies.
Intellectual history, philosophical studies, and scholarly applications of psychoanalysis in fields such as history and literature.
In the beginning the fund awarded a single type of grant to support small research proposals. Recently, the fund has defined four different types of grants with the intention of providing support mechanisms suited to psychoanalytic scholars in varying stages of the research career development:
Grants of one or two years' duration at a maximum of $20,000 yearly for a specific project building upon psychoanalytic
Linda C. Mayes, M.D., is Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, pediatrics, and Psychology at the Yale Child Study Center and chair of the Fund for Psychoanalytic Research. She is on the faculty of the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis and has recently been appointed one of three directors of the Anna Freud Centre in London.
principles or directly investigating the process and/or outcome of psychoanalytically informed treatments. While the maximum award amount is not large compared to federal sources or other foundations, the awards are often sufficient to permit an investigator to start a project.
Small grants of less than $5,000 for one year to permit a beginning scholar to gather some pilot data in preparation for the submission of a full grant to the fund or to another agency.
Small grants of $3,000 to permit a beginning scholar to spend time visiting and consulting with a more experienced senior investigator who has agreed to help the junior investigator begin investigative work. Typically these awards are made to permit the beginning scholar the funds to travel and/or to reimburse the senior investigator for travel and consultation. These grants may also be used to support travel to a research' training seminar in the United States or abroad.
Awards of up to $15,000 annually for up to two years to support the beginning career of a psychoanalytic investigator. These mini-career awards are intended, for example, to “buy time” for a junior faculty member or clinician just starting a practice so that he or she may consult with other investigators, join an investigative team, or attend year-long seminars on research methodology or specific methods relevant to their research.
All submitted proposals are carefully reviewed with respect to aims, methods, clarity, and significance. Typically, the fund receives sixteen to twenty applications per year Applications are funded based on merit. Thus the fund does not award a minimal number of applications every year but makes every effort to find merit in individual submissions.
Every member of the fund's board reads all applications. Three members of the board and/or outside consultants are asked to provide detailed written reviews, which are provided to the applicant in a summary letter written by the chair of the board. The identities of the reviewers are not made known to the applicant.
Many applicants have found the detailed reviews useful for future submissions to the fund and to other agencies. Members of the board are also available to applicants for consultation regarding the preparation of an application. If a board member serves as a consultant he or she does not participate in the review of the application after submission.
Applications are accepted to the fund twice yearly. All applications are reviewed during the winter and spring APsaA meetings. Applicants may obtain forms and instructions through two sources: Call the national office of the American Psychoanalytic Association or download forms and instructions from the fund's Web site.