Your article on the Board on Professional Standard's January 2005 meeting [TAP, Winter/Spring 2005, Vol. 39, No. 1] erroneously portrays the William Alanson White Institute as “seeking en bloc membership” in the American Psychoanalytic Association.
For the record, neither the membership nor the leadership of the White Institute has sought to initiate an application to join the Association at this time. Representatives of the White Institute and the Association's leadership have engaged collegially in exploratory discussions about matters of mutual interest over the past 10 years or so, and we have accepted the Association's gracious invitations to send liaison representatives to the recent BOPS and Executive Council meetings in Seattle in June 2005. We look forward to continuing this dialogue.
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As a matter of historical accuracy, the White Institute last initiated an application to join the Association more than 55 years ago, in November 1948, at a time when the institute qualified under existing rules. This application was deferred for more than four years, during which a number of qualifying rules were changed by the Board on Professional Standards. Following a face-to-face meeting with the Association's Committee on Institutes in November 1952, during which issues of theoretical divergence and training practices emerged as apparently insuperable obstacles, the White Institute formally withdrew its application, with regret.
Thank you for this correction.
Jay S. Kwawer, Ph.D.
Director of Clinical Education William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology New York
We apologize for the error. Thank you for the correction.
Michael Slevin, Editor