Glen Gabbard has been appointed to a chair of psychoanalysis in the Department of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine.
The news triggered a question as to the frequency of such an appointment at a time when it is often claimed that psychoanalysis has been marginalized in our culture. The view of an eclipsed role for psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts contrasts with the situation in the 1950's when many psychiatry department chairs in medical schools were psychoanalysts.
This article focuses on two areas: the notable details surrounding Dr. Gabbard's accomplishment; and TAP's attempt to determine how many others might hold similar positions. Named chairs of psychoanalysis give recognition not only to a particular distinguished psychoanalyst but equally to the field itself.
First, let's turn to Gabbard's appointment. He has been at Baylor since 2001. His appointment as the first Brown Foundation Chair of Psychoanalysis has recently been approved. He was recruited two years ago by Stuart Yudofsky, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Baylor At that time, Gabbard was the Callaway Professor of Psychoanalysis and Education at the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry, so he was already in a position of influence in an academic setting. He was promised a similar status at Baylor, where there has been a long history of sympathetic connection with psychoanalysis and close ties to the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute. What prompted this important naming of a chair and how it was funded were questions that Gabbard considered more appropriately answered by Stuart Yudofsky. I interviewed them both for this article.
Yudofsky said it was his intention to make it possible financially for Gabbard to devote himself to his many and diverse psychoanalytic responsibilities, for example, his work as program chair for the APsaA meetings. He is also currently joint editor-in-chief (and the first non-British editor) of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis with Paul Williams. His duties at Baylor include directing the Psychiatry Clinic, where all the residents and psychology interns learn dynamic therapy, and being director of Psychotherapy Training. In those capacities, he has responsibility for revamping the residency curriculum to increase psychoanalytic therapy courses, in addition to teaching psychodynamic psychiatry and therapy to the residents.
Gabbard remarked that many residents go on to psychoanalytic training at the Houston-Galveston Institute. He believes this choice is due to the presence of analyst/role models among their residency teachers.
In my interview with Yudofsky, he explained that the creation of this appointment goes back to a planning initiative undertaken at Baylor College of Medicine in anticipation of the new century called, “Vision 2000.” Yudofsky, a neuropsychiatrist, made a proposal to the Research Committee, composed mostly of biologically oriented scientists, to set up a Brain and Behavior Center that would be funded by the Brown Foundation for $25 million. This center was to consist of the full range of theoretical and academic pursuits, i.e., molecules and genetics, areas in which Baylor has always been strong, but also various perspectives of psychology, areas less strong at Baylor. In Yudofsky's view, Baylor has always been committed to a bio-psycho-social model, including a psychodynamic/psychoanalytic perspective.
Setting up such a chair is challenging, because not only the person but the named chair has to be approved and funded. To arrange for a named chair, the Faculty Council, made up of all faculty—the entire basic science departments (strongly representing biological scientists) as well as the clinical faculty—must approve. This appears to have been quite a coup.
The Brown Foundation supports the arts, museums, performance arts, and education. This was the largest gift ever given to a medical school. Yudofsky explained why he had proposed a chair in psychoanalysis, rather than the broader category, psychotherapy. He values the psychoanalytic perspective, which he came to appreciate through his own psychoanalytic mentors, such as Hilde Bruch, Larry Kolb, Sherv Frazier, to name a few, and other influences, Bob Michels, Roger MacKinnon, Ethel Person, Michael Stone, Otto Kernberg, Harold Searles. He strongly believes that psychoanalysis must be supported in medical schools. He mentioned Jim Lomax, associate chair, who is also close with the Houston-Galveston Institute.
Following the news of Gabbard's appointment, TAP searched for other known chairs of psychoanalysis. The search yielded eight others so honored. These include: Thomas Barrett, Schmule Erlich, Peter Fonagy, Ed Foulks, Steven Marans, Jon Meyer, Bill Meissner, and Leo Rangell.
Detailed account of the positions of three of these distinguished colleagues follows.
Peter Fonagy has held the position of chair of psychoanalysis at the University College of London since 1992. It was initially a visiting professorship, with Roy Schafer the first holder, in 1975. The one-year model did not sufficiently meet the donor's aim of establishing psychoanalysis within the university, however, so a permanent chair was instated. Joseph Sandler was appointed the first permanent chair in 1985.
Harriet Basseches, Ph.D., on the editorial board of TAP, is a training and supervising analyst at the New York Freudian Society and a member of the Baltimore-Washington Society for Psychoanalysis. She is in private practice in Washington, D.C.
The chair was established by the late owner-editor of the Observer Newspaper, the Right Honorable David Astor. The interest from that large donation now funds the professorship. The psychoanalysis unit, which has three academic staff (Peter Fonagy, Mary Target, David Tuckett), an editor, a conference organizer, and two administrators, is funded by research grants, the Higher Education Funding Council, course fees, and conference fees, in addition to the donation.
The chair's responsibility is to promote psychoanalysis within the university. Fonagy explained, “We run two master's level courses, one on theoretical studies in association with the British Institute and one on development in association with the Anna Freud Centre, and a doctorate in child psychotherapy in association with the Anna Freud Centre.” Fonagy described both master's programs as highly successful and massively oversubscribed with excellent highly qualified candidates from U.K. and U.S. first-rank universities. Since 1992, 23 students have received research Ph.D.'s through the unit.
Fonagy's group has organized the IPA's research training program for the past 9 years, and the IPA's annual research conference for the past 15 years. The success of the unit as a center for international psychoanalysis has increased respect for psychoanalysis within the university. Moreover, Fonagy thinks that the active participation of the Freud chair in the administrative work of the Department of Psychology has “legitimized” psychoanalysis for many academics.
On this side of the Atlantic, Jon Meyer has just retired from a chair of psychoanalysis at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, which he has held since 1996. Based on that position, Meyer was also the director of the Division of Psychoanalysis in the Department of Psychiatry. Not a customary title at the college, but recommended by the chairman of psychiatry and granted by the dean, Meyer has been the only person to be so named. This position was funded as part of his overall financial support as full-time faculty at the Medical College. Meyer explained that the original concept of his position was to promote coordination and collaboration among a teaching hospital, the medical school, and the Wisconsin Psychoanalytic Foundation. This was conceptualized 20 years ago, much ahead of its time, and has worked out more successfully than anyone could have imagined.
In an interview with William Meissner, he described the way his chair of psychoanalysis at Boston College evolved. Dr. Meissner's position was formalized in 1987. He had resigned his post as a clinical professor at Harvard, where the combination of the increasingly biological direction of the department and the increasingly difficult institutional changes had become frustrating. Already on the Boston College Board, he moved fully into that Jesuit community. The president of Boston College and he decided on naming him University Professor of Psychoanalysis, a tenured position financed within the University budget. Boston College did not have a medical school; his appointment was the first non-medical post of its kind in the country.
As part of his responsibilities, Meissner ran a lecture series open to the Boston analytic community that gave analysts a place to voice their changing views more freely than was felt possible at the institutes. He arranged for analysts to give paid courses in the Counseling Program and in the Social Work School. He offered weekend symposia to the broader mental health community, including one on music and one on aggression. For the past six years, he has provided an introductory course for the University and the Counseling Program, drawing approximately 25 students each year.
Meissner is enthusiastic about a new set of courses he views as a breakthrough offered in the fall of 2003. These will make up a psychoanalytic minor in the undergraduate college for students majoring in English, history, literature, and philosophy. The introductory course, mentioned above, will be used as a basic course for the minor. Some other courses include one by Bill Richardson, a Heidegger scholar and primary interpreter of Lacan. Thus, psychoanalytic ideas will be integrated into undergraduate as well as graduate education.
To complete this survey, mention, albeit brief, needs to be made about others who hold this special title. Thomas Barrett occupies a newly endowed Chair of Child Psychoanalysis in the Department of Pediatrics of Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and University Hospitals of Cleveland. Barrett is clinical director of the Hanna Perkins Center.
Professor Shmuel Erlich holds the Freud Chair at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. Steven Marens holds a position at the Yale Child Study Center of the Yale University School of Medicine as the Irving Harris Associate Professor of Psychoanalysis.
Edward F. Foulks, associate dean of Tulane University Medical Center, has held the Mary Peters-Polchow-Sellars Chair of Psychoanalysis at Tulane University School of Medicine since 1986. He explained that donor Mary Sellars had established the chair position in order to ensure that psychoanalytic psychotherapy would continue to have a prominent place in the training of medical students as well as residents in psychiatry in this era of ever-expanding advances in pharmacological treatments of mental disorders.
Finally, there is Leo Rangell, who has held the title of chair of psychoanalysis since 1971. He had been clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, for over 20 years. In 1976, when he was appointed to the faculty of a second University of California campus, in San Francisco—at that time the only double appointment in two branches of the University system—he was named clinical professor of psychiatry (psychoanalysis). Visiting professorships are another related category of honoring psychoanalysts in academia. The Heinz Kohut Visiting Professorship at the University of Chicago, named after a psychoanalyst rather than the field of psychoanalysis, was reported to TAP by Jonathan Lear, one of the professors associated with the sponsoring group. Leading thinkers are invited for a year to enhance a strong psychoanalytic cadre of professors already teaching at the University of Chicago under the rubric of the Committee on Social Thought, chaired by Robert Pippin. Appointments have included Stanley Cavell from Harvard, Robert Hinschelwood from London, Robert Paul from Emory, and Bennett Simon from Harvard. Future honorees are John Riker from Colorado College (philosophy) and Mark Solms from the Anna Freud Centre, London.
The number of chairs of psychoanalysis is not large. Some of these positions have been held through many of the lean years of value for psychoanalytic thinking. But also new appointments have been increasing since the 1990's into the new century.
Taken together, these represent outstanding people in our field. Their recognition clearly reflects on their own exceptional work. More than that, each of them without question strengthens the presence of psychoanalysis in academia and well beyond.
The discussion has focused on psychoanalysts who are in positions that directly identify psychoanalysis. Not to be overlooked, however, are the many analysts who function in academia in positions of honor and influence without the title of “chair in psychoanalysis.”