CIPS
CONFEDERATION OF
INDEPENDENT PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETIES
THE CONFEDERATION OF
INDEPENDENT PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETIES:
THE EMERGENCE AND CONSOLIDATION OF A PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY
Prepared on behalf of the Committee on CIPS History by Fredric Perlman (co-chair) in consultation with Harriet Basseches (co-chair), Steven Ellman, Norbert Freedman, Beth Kalish-Weiss, Ernest Lawrence, Terrence McBride, and James Gooch (consultants).
CIPS members are invited send comments, edits, proposed revisions, and additional information to the Select Committee on CIPS History at history@cipsusa.org.
The Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Professional Community
The Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies (CIPS) was founded in 1992 in response to the historic changes in the organization of American psychoanalysis that occurred in the late 1980’s. These changes, which resulted from the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the Group for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Psychology (GAPPP) against the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) and the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), transformed the relationships among American psychoanalysts and between American psychoanalysts and the international psychoanalytic community. CIPS was formed to represent a newly emerging community of independent American psychoanalytic societies of the IPA.
The organizational history of American psychoanalysis prior to the GAPPP lawsuit was shaped, in large measure, by the policies of APsaA and by its unique status within the IPA. Through most of its history, the educational policies of all APsaA institutes restricted psychoanalytic training to physicians, excluding social workers, psychologists, and other mental health professionals from training at APsaA institutes and barring them from membership in the association. At the same time, APsaA held an “exclusive franchise” in relation to the IPA. Under arrangements established before the Second World War, APsaA was to be the sole American organization belonging to the IPA, a rule that permitted only APsaA members to become members of the IPA. American psychoanalysts barred from joining APsaA were thus also excluded from the IPA. At the same time, APsaA’s exclusive franchise with the IPA prevented psychoanalytic institutes outside APsaA from applying directly to the IPA for accreditation and component status. This was a very damaging set of arrangements, because the IPA, founded by Sigmund Freud and his collaborators in 1908, is the largest and most important professional association of psychoanalysts in the world.
The settlement of the lawsuit necessitated the abandonment of these policies by both APsaA, which renounced its “exclusive franchise” and its restrictive admission policies, and by the IPA, which was freed by the settlement to admit new American psychoanalytic groups to the IPA. In 1989 and 1991, four psychoanalytic societies that had long modeled their training programs and membership criteria on the rigorous standards of the IPA, were accredited by the IPA and granted provisional component status within the international association. These groups were the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, the New York Freudian Society, the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies, and the Psychoanalytic Center of California. These four societies shared a common history of exclusion from APsaA and the IPA as well as a common commitment to the promotion of psychoanalysis as an interdisciplinary profession. As the first independent component societies of the IPA in the United States, these groups confronted the challenge of establishing themselves within the international association as well as within the professional community of IPA psychoanalysts in the United States. The Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies was formed to enable these “independent groups,” to pursue their common goals in concert.
PSYCHOANALYSIS IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES:
THE QUESTION OF “LAY ANALYSIS”
The unique character and culture of CIPS and its component societies is a product of its history and its historic role in the evolution of psychoanalysis in the United States. This history has been characterized a long struggle between competing segments of the American psychoanalytic community to control the boundaries of psychoanalysis as a profession. This struggle, once characterized as the controversy over “lay analysis,” first crystallized when Freud and his followers began organizing psychoanalysis as a profession with defined standards for training and certification. The impetus for this initiative was Freud’s concern about the practices of physicians and other persons who purported to practice psychoanalysis without having been trained to do so. Freud recognized that such so-called “wild analysis” threatened the future of psychoanalysis as well as the welfare of the public. It was therefore necessary to professionalize psychoanalysis: to establish adequate standards and a program of certification to enable the public to differentiate trained psychoanalysts from untrained persons seeking to exploit the growing prestige of psychoanalysis by identifying themselves as psychoanalysts. The IPA was conceived in 1908, and then formally established in 1910, in order to promote these professional purposes (Freud, 1910, 1914; Jones, 1955).
While analysts on both sides of the Atlantic participated in the creation of the IPA, the organizational history of American psychoanalysis differed significantly from that of Europe. Although most psychoanalysts in Europe and the United States were physicians, membership in most European psychoanalytic societies was open to individuals from a broad spectrum of disciplines and professional backgrounds. Many of the early analysts in Freud’s circle were non-physicians (Roazen, 1971: Wallerstein, 1998). Freud maintained that medical training should not be a prerequisite for psychoanalytic training and practice, and actively supported the psychoanalytic careers of non-medical aspirants (Freud, 1926). From its outset, the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society was open to talented persons from all disciplines. Freud was particularly eager to encourage academics and scholars from the humanities who could “apply” psychoanalytic knowledge to their respective fields of endeavor. Otto Rank, Theodore Reik, and Hans Sachs were among the first of these “lay analysts” trained especially to work in the area of “applied psychoanalysis” (Schroter, 2004).
Freud formulated his most impassioned and comprehensive argument in favor of this position when a psychologist-psychoanalyst from the Vienna Society, Theodor Reik, was sued for practicing medicine without a license (Freud, 1926). In this monograph, The Question of Lay Analysis, Freud articulated his vision of psychoanalysis as an autonomous profession, independent of medicine, with full professional education for new analysts to be provided by free-standing psychoanalytic training institutes, then starting to be formed.
Not all European analysts shared Freud’s views regarding the training of non-physicians in psychoanalysis. Some leading analysts, such as Karl Abraham, the leader of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society, strongly preferred to restrict psychoanalytic training to physicians. Membership in the Berlin Institute, unlike that in Vienna, was restricted to physicians, with the exception of those “lay analysts” like Rank, Reik and Sachs whose work was limited to “applied psychoanalysis” rather than clinical treatment, and those whose clinical practices, like that of Melanie Klein, were restricted to child analysis (Schroter, 2004; Wallerstein, 1998). Some European analysts objected to the training of any non-physicians, even those specializing in “applied psychoanalysis,” arguing that such analysts, including Rank, Reik, and Sachs, inevitably engaged in clinical work with patients. Among other motives, this position may have reflected a wish to restrict competition for the limited number of prospective patients (Shroter, 2004).
In 1927, following publication of Freud’s monograph on lay analysis, Ernest Jones, then editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, solicited the views of both European and American analysts with regard to the question of lay analysis. Ten of the twenty-two Europeans, four of whom were lay analysts themselves, strongly supported Freud’s position. Seven European analysts articulated arguments in opposition to lay analysis. The Viennese and Berlin groups were split in their attitudes. All three British analysts included in the survey, including Jones, took compromise positions favoring lay analysis under special conditions, such as medical supervision (Jones et al, 1927; Wallerstein, 1998). Despite these differences, Freud’s vision of psychoanalysis as an interdisciplinary enterprise, supported by the growing number of non-medical analysts, would come to shape the organization of European psychoanalysis. Many of the luminary figures in the early history of psychoanalysis, including Siegfried Bernfeld, Ernst Kris, Otto Rank, Theodor Reik, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Ella Freeman Sharpe, Robert Waelder, Erik Erikson and many others, were individuals whose backgrounds in the arts and sciences enabled them to make unique contributions to the evolving body of psychoanalytic ideas (Bergmann, 1988).
The development of psychoanalysis in the United States, however, was determined by contingencies that differed significantly from those obtaining in Europe. Before the establishment of formal training institutes in the United States in the 1930’s, Americans who aspired to careers in psychoanalysis needed to go to Europe to train with Freud or with members of his small circle of followers. Psychoanalytic training was thus a far more difficult and expensive undertaking for Americans than it was for Europeans. With rare exceptions, the only Americans to travel to Europe to study psychoanalysis were physicians, many of whom were already accustomed to pursuing advanced medical training at the prestigious medical centers of Paris, Berlin, Zurich, and other European cities.
From its earliest days, then, the psychoanalytic community in the United States was composed predominantly of physicians who went on to shape the development of psychoanalysis on this side of the Atlantic. The fact that the American psychoanalytic community was composed of physicians entailed a second fateful contingency. While the profession of medicine was highly organized and securely established in England and in central Europe, American medicine had long been characterized by haphazard training and was unregulated by any medical establishment or by any governmental authority. The Flexner report of 1910 revealed the chaotic and uneven state of American medical schools, many of which were exposed as “diploma mills” graduating incompetent practitioners (Flexner, 1910; Wallerstein, 1998). Following the publication of the Flexner report, the American medical community devoted considerable resources to the cause of enhancing the professional status of medicine in the United States (Freidson, 1970; Starr, 1982). American psychoanalysts believed that the inclusion of non-physicians within their ranks would both endanger the status of psychoanalysis and, at the same time, thwart their efforts to elevate the status of medicine. They preferred to organize the American psychoanalytic profession as an exclusive domain within medicine, thus protecting both medicine and psychoanalysis from any possible taint of quackery or lack of professionalism (Wallerstein, 1998).
As a result, the first formal American professional associations of psychoanalysts were primarily medical associations. The New York Psychoanalytic Society, founded in 1911 as a professional membership society for New York analysts, the American Psychoanalytic Association, established the same year to serve as a professional society for American psychoanalysts living outside the New York area, and the Boston and Baltimore-Washington Psychoanalytic Societies, founded in 1914, were all closed to non-medical practitioners. The “medical orthodoxy” of American psychoanalysis became more entrenched in the ensuing years because the attachment of American psychoanalysts to medicine deepened as the status of American medicine was enhanced in the middle years of the century (Eissler, 1965; Wallerstein, 1998).
From the earliest days of psychoanalysis, then, American and European psychoanalysts diverged in their visions of psychoanalysis as an enterprise and in the boundaries they set for membership in the profession. These differences came to a head in the 1925, when the IPA created the International Training Commission to establish uniform policies for psychoanalytic education (Fine, 1978; Schroter, 2002). Through its early history, psychoanalytic training had been informal, and consisted largely of participation in the scientific meetings of the psychoanalytic societies, and in some cases, of personal analysis for the aspirant. When aspirants were ready, they applied for membership in the society, a process that typically required the presentation of a paper. In the 1920’s, however, European analysts began establishing formal training institutes, beginning with the Berlin Institute and Poliklinic in 1920, the Vienna Institute and Ambulatorium in 1922, and the London Institute in 1924 (Danto, 1998, 1999; Schroter, 2002). European analysts, eager to promote the social authority and internal cohesiveness of the emerging profession and its new training programs, sought to institutionalize uniform training standards through the IPA, setting up the International Training Commission to attain this end (Fine, 1978, Schroter, 2002).
The attempt to establish a uniform standard, however, quickly surfaced the tensions brewing among Europeans, and more importantly, between Europeans and American analysts, about lay analysis. American psychoanalysts, who then constituted only a small minority of IPA analysts, strongly opposed the European training model and were adamant in their insistence that psychoanalysis in the United States be limited to physicians. All four of the American respondents to Jones 1927 questionnaire were strenuously opposed to the training of lay persons. Not only did American analysts refuse to train non-medical applicants or admit non-medical analysts into their ranks, they pressed the European branch societies and the IPA to support this American policy by refusing to provide training to Americans unless they had been issued prior authorization by a local branch society in the United States (Fine, 1978; Menaker, 1989; Schroter, 2002; Wallerstein, 1998). Some leaders of the American psychoanalytic establishment, incensed by the interference of European analysts in American professional affairs, questioned the wisdom of their allegiance to the IPA, believing that their alliance with psychiatry was more important to their interests than their continued affiliation with the IPA (D’Amore, 1978). The conflict between the Europeans and the Americans simmered through the ensuing decade with no resolution (Wallerstein, 1998).
During the 1930’s, American psychoanalysis underwent a major reorganization. Like the European psychoanalytic societies in the previous decade, psychoanalytic societies in the United States began setting up their own training institutes, beginning with the establishment of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute in 1931, the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute in 1932, and the Boston and Washington Psychoanalytic Institutes in 1933. In 1932, the American Psychoanalytic Association was restructured as a federation of societies and training institutes, an organizational move that facilitated the establishment of the American association as a national professional organization, with its own training standards and accreditation functions. In 1936, American analysts demanded the functional dissolution of the International Training Commission, arguing that the Commission should be reorganized as a scientific rather than a regulatory body. Two years later, in 1938, the association adopted a formal “Resolution Against the Future Training of Laymen for the Therapeutic Use of Psychoanalysis” (APsaA, 1938). At the IPA Congress that year, American delegates confronted the IPA with a demand that the American association be granted an “exclusive franchise” on IPA membership for American analysts, with full autonomy and regulatory authority with regard to training policies and membership criteria for persons seeking to train or practice in the United States (Wallerstein, 1998).
The deepening conflict between the Americans and the IPA could not be resolved at the 1938 Congress, and the outbreak of World War II interrupted the ongoing organizational functioning of the IPA. The war decimated the population of European psychoanalysts, many of whom were Jews coming to the United States to escape Nazi persecution. At the same time, the APsaA, demographically strengthened by the large number of European analysts who immigrated to the U.S., assumed the prerogatives it had demanded in 1938 and proceeded to function independently as an autonomous association. When the IPA resumed functioning after the war in 1946, European leaders of the IPA had little choice but to accept the new reality. Although the new arrangements demanded by the Americans in 1938 had been in effect from the outbreak of the war, they were not formalized until 1963, when the IPA accorded APsaA the status of a “regional association” within the IPA, with an “exclusive franchise” on IPA membership for American psychoanalysts and full autonomy with regard to admission policies at its institutes (Wallerstein, 1998).
SEEDS OF CHANGE: THE GROWTH OF LAY ANALYSIS IN THE UNITED STATES
Although APsaA maintained its policy of “medical orthodoxy,” forbidding its members to provide “unauthorized” training to non-medical aspirants outside the aegis of its training institutes, its efforts to eradicate “lay analysis” would prove futile. Some Americans from outside medicine, like Esther and William Menaker, had already trained in Europe and had begun practicing and teaching in New York upon their return (Menaker 1989). Moreover, many of the European analysts who settled in the United States were not physicians and, like the Menakers, were forced to practice without APsaA authorization. The most important of these was Theodore Reik, whose later career as an independent educator of aspiring analysts would decisively transform the organization of psychoanalysis in the United States. In addition, a sizable number medically qualified European analysts opposed the restrictive training policies of the American Association, and were prepared to violate the strictures of the Association in order to teach psychoanalysis to would-be colleagues who were barred from formal training by the restrictive policies of the American association. Together, these analysts formed a pool of teachers and supervisors to whom non-medical aspirants could turn for help in mastering psychoanalytic ideas and techniques.
At the same time, the Second World War had spurred the development of clinical psychology and expanded the demand for psychiatric social work. With the close of the war, a growing number of professionals in both disciplines were eager to obtain psychoanalytic training. Some aspiring analysts, such as Martin and Maria Bergmann, arranged their own training by forming study groups with European émigré analysts such as Theodor Reik, Paul Federn and Robert Waelder, and obtaining their training analysis and supervision with analysts from both within and without the American association (Perlman, 1999). Although the American association had strictly forbidden its members from participation in such “bootleg” training, many were instrumental in training the first generation of American social workers and psychologists to become psychoanalysts (Bergmann, 1988; Wallerstein, 1998).
By the close of the war decade, the first formal psychoanalytic training programs for non-medical analysts were established. Theodor Reik, the psychologist whose practice had occasioned Freud’s defense of lay analysis in 1927, and who had been barred from full membership in the American association, became a popular teacher of psychoanalysis and, in 1941, established the Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology to provide a professional “home” for non-medical analysts and aspirants. In 1948, he founded the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP) in New York, the first psychoanalytic training institute to provide psychoanalytic training in accordance with the interdisciplinary European training model. NPAP became the hub of an emerging community of “lay analysis” in New York. In the late 1950’s, two groups of NPAP members split off to form their own institutes, the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, in 1958, and the New York Freudian Society, in 1959 (Menaker, 1988; Richards, 1996; Sherman, 1988). Both groups were determined to provide training at a level commensurate with IPA standards.
The growth of “lay analysis” was also spurred by dissension over doctrinal issues within APsaA. In 1941, theoretical conflicts inspired Karen Horney and her followers to secede from APsaA to form their own institute. While Horney’s American Institute for Psychoanalysis maintained the medical orthodoxy of the American Association, a subsequent split, two years later, gave rise to the William Alanson White Institute, which would offer psychoanalytic training to psychologists (Eckardt, 1978; Eisold, 1998; Fine, 1978). A few years later, Lewis Wolberg, a graduate of the Horney’s American Institute, went on to found the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, a training institute offering psychoanalytic training to social workers and psychologists as well as psychiatrists (Fine, 1978).
During the ensuing decades, graduates of all these programs themselves would go on to found other institutes. With the establishment of additional institutes in New York and elsewhere, the population of so-called “lay analysts” gradually expanded to approximate that of APsaA. Social workers and psychologists had not only formed their own institutes, they also came to form their own professional associations, including the National Committee for Psychoanalysis in Social Work, and Division 39, the Division of Psychoanalysis within the American Psychological Association. Still, there was no route to membership in the IPA, except through the American Psychoanalytic Association.
The GAPPP Lawsuit
This state of affairs was challenged by a civil lawsuit brought against APsaA and the IPA in 1985 by four psychologists claiming to represent an aggrieved class of several thousand psychologists. The lawsuit was funded by the “Group for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Psychology,” or “GAPPP,” an organization formed in 1984 by members of the Division of Psychoanalysis (Division 39) to fund legal action challenging the exclusionary training policies of these organizations. GAPPP was spearheaded by a steering committee composed of three Division 39 leaders: Ernest Lawrence, President of Division 39 (and later president of CIPS), Nathan Stockhammer, chair of the Division 39 Qualifications Committee, and Bryant Welch, co-chair of the division’s Professional Issues Committee, and also a practicing attorney. The lawsuit challenged APsaA’s restrictive training policies as well as its “exclusive franchise” on IPA membership, charging both associations with restraint of trade, a violation of the Sherman antitrust law. In addition to filing the lawsuit, the GAPPP plaintiffs threatened to bring a complaint against APsaA to the Federal Trade Commission (Wallerstein, 1998; Simon, 2003).
The lawsuit posed a grave threat to APsaA and the IPA. The costs of conducting litigation were themselves substantial and the financial costs of damages and other penalties were potentially severe (Simon, 2003). The potential damage of the lawsuit was particularly disturbing insofar as APsaA had already been engaged in various organizational initiatives intended to relax its historic restrictions against formal training for non-medical practitioners. In 1956, APsaA amended its rules to permit its institutes to provide psychoanalytic training to a limited number of exceptional individuals from outside medicine. These trainees, however, sometimes referred to as “research psychoanalysts,” were officially barred from practicing psychoanalysis, except in conjunction with their research activities. Subsequent proposals in the 1970’s to bring the training policies of APsaA into closer alignment with IPA policies elsewhere in the world had been considered by a succession of four APsaA committees, but these efforts had each been brought to a halt by persistent divisions within APsaA (Wallerstein, 1998; Simon, 2003). The GAPPP lawsuit, however, had a galvanizing impact on APsaA, pressing the organization to settle its internal dissensions and transform its policies to avoid litigation. In 1984, as the threat of the lawsuit loomed, APsaA convened a new committee, chaired by Herbert Gaskill, to once again reassess APsaA’s exclusionary policies. In 1986, APsaA instituted the so-called “Gaskill agreement” according to which APsaA agreed to provide full psychoanalytic training to a limited number of non-medical candidates. The GAPPP plaintiffs, however, were not satisfied with such a limited concession, and persisted in their efforts to seek a fuller accommodation (Wallerstein, 1998).
The lawsuit was filed on March 1, 1985. After a difficult series of tense negotiations, the lawsuit was finally settled in 1987, initiating two radical changes in the organization of psychoanalysis in the United States. APsaA agreed to open its training to non-medical applicants, and at the same time, the IPA dissolved the “exclusive franchise” arrangement demanded by the Americans in 1938. Although APsaA continued to be a “regional association” of the IPA, its authority after 1987 was restricted to the regulation of its own affiliated institutes and societies. The settlement thus permitted psychoanalytic training institutes in the United States to seek accreditation through the IPA rather than APsaA, and to become “independent” component societies of the IPA.
The settlement brought the divisive issue of “lay analysis” to a final close and ushered in a new and more hopeful era for psychoanalysis. The lawsuit benefited the lay analysts who had long been excluded from APsaA and the IPA, but at the same time, it strengthened APsaA by opening its doors to a wide spectrum of new candidates and members, many of whom are now making significant contributions to the organization. Richard Simon, president of APsaA during the years of the lawsuit, would note in retrospect that “the lawsuit saved APsaA” (Simon, 2003). At the same time, the lawsuit produced a wholesome and invigorating transformation of the IPA. Once the “exclusive franchise” of APsaA was dissolved, it became possible for a hitherto excluded population of American psychoanalysts to join the IPA, infusing it with fresh energy and new ideas, and significantly enhancing its importance and prominence in the United States.
A NEW PSYCHOANALYTIC COMMUNITY EMERGES: “THE INDEPENDENTS”
The settlement of the lawsuit required action by the IPA to accommodate applications for accreditation by American groups seeking to affiliate with the IPA. Under the leadership of IPA President Robert Wallerstein, the IPA initiated the development of new accreditation procedures and appointed Charles Hanly of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society to serve as the Chair of New Groups Committee for the United States. Four American institutes, all following the European training model of interdisciplinary psychoanalysis, elected to apply for IPA accreditation: The Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR), the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies (LAISPS), New York Freudian Society (NYFS), and the Psychoanalytic Center of California (PCC). Site visits were conducted at IPTAR, NYFS, and PCC in 1988, and at LAISPS in 1989. By the time of the IPA congress of 1989, the accreditation procedures IPTAR, NYFS and PCC were completed, and all three societies were unanimously voted into membership at the Rome Congress.
“The Rome Congress in 1989 was a historic and moving occasion,” wrote Norbert Freedman and Jean Sanville some years later. During the vote, they wrote, representatives of the three societies “were asked to wait outside the hall until the vote had been completed. Then, to a standing ovation lasting for five minutes, they were ushered in, received, and asked to take their seats. It was a cornerstone in the history of the IPA and anyone who was in Rome then can hardly forget it” (Freedman and Sanville, 1999, p. 47). The emotional impact of the reception was similarly noted by IPA president Robert Wallerstein several years earlier: “Of any business meeting that I’ve attended in the IPA—and I have been attending them for twenty or thirty years now—the most moving was the time when that vote was announced, and the new members came into the room to take part for the rest of the day in the proceedings”(Wallerstein, 1993, p. 21).
LAISPS was voted in to the IPA as a provisional society two years later in Buenos Aires Congress in 1991. The LAISPS approval required a good deal of effort since LAISPS had accepted two Mexican analysts who were members of a psychoanalytic society in Mexico that was not affiliated with the IPA. The Mexican IPA societies, construing this as action as a potentially dangerous precedent that could damage their authority over the practice of psychoanalysis in Mexico, responded by strenuously opposing the admission of LAISPS into the IPA. The acceptance of LAISPS was in serious jeopardy, and a great deal of negotiation was necessary to pacify the Mexican IPA societies and secure the support that was needed to ensure the approval of LAISPS as a full component society (Terrence McBride, personal communication).
The “New IPA Groups of North America”
The formal settlement of the lawsuit did not, however, bring the historic stuggle of American non-medical analysts to a peaceful conclusion. Influential opponents of the settlement continued maneuvering to press APsaA and the IPA to implement measures to counteract the impact of the settlement. As a result, APsaA instituted special requirements for non-medical candidates at APsaA institutes while the IPA introduced new requirements that would slow down the accreditation of new applicant groups seeking component status. The situation was sufficiently grave that the American Psychological Association, in support of the GAPPP plaintiffs, appointed a watchdog committee to monitor compliance with the settlement (Karon, 1994).
Recognizing the opposition to their integration within the IPA, the newly admitted “independents” determined to form a single organizational entity to promote their common interests, both within the IPA as well as in the wider psychoanalytic community of North America. Norbert Freedman and Steven Ellman of IPTAR, Albert Mason of PCC, Abby-Adams Silvan of NYFS, and Jean Sanville of LAISPS took the lead in articulating the need for a new organization to represent the interests of the “independents.” Norbert Freedman, then president of IPTAR, contacted Abby-Adams Silvan, Albert Mason, Ernest Lawrence, presidents of NYFS, PCC, and LAISPS, respectively, to organize a meeting of the four society presidents to take place at the Buenos Aires Congress in 1991. Although Freedman could not attend the conference, the meeting took place as planned, and was attended by many representatives of the four groups (Freedman and Sanville, 1999). The meeting was not official and no formal decisions were taken at the meeting. However, the participants had the opportunity to get to know each other and learn about each other’s societies. Following their Buenos Aires meeting, the leaders of the four new groups began to communicate on a regular basis, and the first informal structures of an emerging organization began to take shape (Basseches, 1994).
Important events within the IPA would soon inspire the four groups to forge a more formal organization. The governance structure of the IPA had long been highly centralized and component societies around the world were mobilizing for a change. The need to democratize the governance of the IPA was a major topic at the Buenos Aires Congress of 1991. Joseph Sandler, then president of the IPA, called for a President’s Meeting to be attended by all presidents of component societies of the IPA to discuss IPA governance and its reform. The meeting, held in London on July 24 1992, was to be a galvanizing event for the new groups. Sandler led a movement to promote the creation of a new IPA organizational body, the House of Delegates, to share governance of the IPA with the existing bodies, the Executive Board and the Executive Council. The plan called for the creation of a working group to prepare organizational plans for the new House of Delegates and to draft new IPA Bylaws. The working group was to be formed by representatives of the three IPA regions: Europe, Latin America, and North America. And herein lay an organizational dilemma. In the past, APsaA would have represented North America in conjunction with its North American neighbor, the much smaller Canadian Psychoanalytic Society (CPS). With the addition of four new groups in the United States, this was no longer an adequate arrangement.
Anticipating the need to protect their common interests at the Presidents’ Meeting, leaders of the four independent groups met in London to develop a common agenda for the upcoming meeting. Abby Adams-Silvan, Norbert Freedman, Albert Mason, and Jean Sanville – then presidents of the four independent societies – agreed that the four independent societies should present a united front to the assembled presidents and, most importantly, should work together to ensure that the independent groups would be full participants in the formation of any organizational body representing the North American IPA groups in the planning of the new House of Delegates.
Immediately following the 1992 Presidents meeting in London, the leaders of the four societies met in New York to discuss the formation of a formal coalition. This meeting, which would be a defining moment in the history of the emerging CIPS community, was held in Carolyn Ellman’s office, and was attended by Norbert Freedman and Steven Ellman from IPTAR, Abby Adams-Silvan and Mark Silvan from the NYFS, Albert Mason from PCC and Jean Sanville from LAISPS. The four society leaders laid out a plan to form an official coalition, to be called the “New IPA Groups of North America.” The conferees agreed that the new coalition would be governed by a steering committee comprised of the four society presidents and a second representative from each society. The steering committee would be co-chaired by one representative from an East Coast society and one representative from a West Coast society.
The plan for the new organization was enthusiastically approved by each of the four societies. The first steering committee, comprised of Steven Ellman and Norbert Freedman from IPTAR, Jean Sanville and Peter Wolson from LAISPS, Abby Adams-Silvan and Mark Silvan from NYFS, and Albert Mason and Fred Vaquer from PCC, began meeting later that year under the co-chairmanship of Norbert Freedman and Jean Sanville (Freedman and Sanville, 1993). The steering committee, which met monthly via conference calls, considered a wide range of issues. The most critical project on their agenda, however, was the formation of a new organizational entity to represent the North American region to the IPA. The steering committee was determined to organize a regional association for all the IPA groups of North America. The leaders of the new groups were convinced that it was necessary to create a new regional organization to ensure their full participation in the future governance of the North American region and, of course, to secure their representation in deliberations regarding the organization and composition of the new House of Delegates (Basseches, 1993, 2000; Freedman and Sanville, 1999).
The New Groups and the North American IPA Groups (NAIPAG)
The steering committee took the initiative by engaging APsaA and the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society (CPS) in a dialogue to explore the possibility of establishing a North American entity analogous to the regional associations in Europe and Latin America. A meeting of representatives of APsaA, the CPS, and the “New IPA Groups” was held in NY on October 24, 1992. Each group was represented by two delegates, with Steven Ellman and Mark Silvan representing the “New IPA Groups.” Participants at the meeting, which was chaired by Bernard Pacella, the president of APsaA, agreed that North American psychoanalytic groups of the IPA needed to form a regional association, but they confronted a very difficult set of challenges.
The sizes of the North American groups differed dramatically. The IPS and the Canadian group each included about 400 analysts, while APsaA was constituted an organization of nearly 3,000 analysts. This made it very difficult to create a workable system of representation. The Canadians and the IPS wanted to ensure that they had some meaningful influence in the new organization, while the American association wanted to ensure that its prerogatives would not be curtailed by two relatively small groups. This situation was further complicated by the historic role of the American association in relation to the IPA. APsaA had represented North American psychoanalysts in the governance structures of IPA, and many APsaA leaders were naturally reluctant to surrender this institutional power. While the IPA plan to create the House of Delegates necessitated the creation of a regional organization, the psychoanalysts of North America, who had little history of cooperation and a long history of conflict, now had to put such an organization together.
To their great credit, the conferees arrived at a tentative agreement to establish a regional organization, to be composed of all three North American groups, and to be governed by a board composed of five representatives from APsaA, two representatives from the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, and two representatives from the “New IPA Group.” The group also agreed to establish a rotating chairmanship to ensure that each group has equal leadership opportunities (Basseches, 1993, 1994).
The same representatives reconvened at a second meeting called by Bernard Pacella in March of 1993. In the intervening months, the governing bodies of each of the three organizations had ratified the plan to form the North American organizational entity, and agreed to the governance structure negotiated at the October meeting. The new organization, to be called the “North American IPA Groups” would soon become known by its acronym, NAIPAG. At the March meeting, a NAIPAG Liaison Committee was appointed to develop arrangements for the selection of a North American delegation to the new House of Delegates of the IPA. The Liaison Committee was composed of two representatives from each of the component organizations: Helen Meyers and Owen Renik from APsaA, Carlos Featherstone and Brian Robertson from the Canadian Society, and Steven Ellman and Mark Silvan from the “New IPA Groups” (Basseches, 1993, 1994).
The Liaison Committee, which met in Montreal in May, later that year, succeeded in working out a proportional arrangement for representation to the new House of Delegates, according to which APsaA would appoint five delegates and the Canadian Society and the IPS would each appoint two representatives to the House of Delgates. In addition, the Liaison Committee also had to develop a formula for appointments to the Executive Council, the central governance body of the IPA, now to be composed of the IPA officers along with one representative from each of the three regional delegations to the House of Delegates. Addressing this dilemma, the Liaison committee agreed to a rotation system for the appointment of the North American delegate to the Executive Council, thus ensuring that each group had an opportunity to participate at the highest level of IPA governance.
The creation of NAIPAG, spearheaded by the “New IPA Groups,” was a critical milestone in the reorganization of North American psychoanalysis, ushering in a period of regular contact between the three major North American IPA organizations. When the House of Delegates began meeting in 1994, Norbert Freedman and Jean Sanville were appointed to represent the “New Groups,” later to be followed by Steve Ellman, Albert Mason, Beth Kalish-Weiss, Ann Rudovsky, and Nancy Hollander. Steve Ellman would go on to represent the North American delegation on the IPA Executive Council (Ellman, 1999; Kalish-Weiss, 2003; Steve Ellman, personal communication; Beth Kalish Weiss, personal communication). The House of Delegates would continue meeting until 2001, when the governance structure of the IPA was again transformed to promote further democratization (Rudovsky, 2001). The success of the Liaison Committee in working out the arrangements for the North American delegation to the House of Delegates was demonstrated by the collegial cooperation and coordination of the nine-member delegation that represented the North American region at the House of Delegates throughout the seven years of its existence (Basseches, 1995b; Freedman and Sanville, 1999).
The Coalition of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies
As the “New IPA Groups of the United States” participated in the creation of NAIPAG, the leaders of the New IPA Groups decided that their organization needed a name that conveyed the growing unity of the new groups. In the spring of 1993, the New Groups adopted a new name: the Coalition of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies, or the “IPS”, for short. In May 1993, Norbert Freedman and Jean Sanville, co-chairs of the emerging organization, wrote to both Joseph Sandler and Horacio Etchegoyen, then President and President-elect of the IPA, to inform them that the “New IPA Groups in North America” had been renamed the “Coalition of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies.” Sandler and Etchegoyen each responded with a congratulatory letter of recognition (Basseches, 1995).
On July 28, 1993, at the Amsterdam Congress, IPTAR, NYFS, and PCC were awarded full component status by acclamation at the IPA business meeting. (LAISPS, which had become a Provisional society at the 1991 congress, would become a full component society the following Congress in 1995.) Their “graduation” to full component status was celebrated later in the day at a gala event, hosted by the IPS. Invited guests included members of the Executive Committee of the IPA, Robert Wallerstein, Joseph Sandler, Horatio Etchegoyen, and Valerie Tuffnell, the new Vice Presidents, Otto Kernberg and Harold Blum, Ethel Person, then editor of the IPA Newsmagazine, along with the site visitors who had shepherded the three groups through the accreditation process. These included Charles Hanly of Canada, Chairman of the IPA New Groups Committee, David Sachs, who succeeded Hanly in this position, and Owen Renik, who had served as the committee’s North American co-chair. Also present were Bernard Pacella, then President of the APsaA, and Donald Meyers of APsaA. Norbert Freedman, whose vision and organizational efforts had inspired the first meetings leading to the formation of the coalition, gave a toast, here quoted almost in its entirety:
“This is a homecoming for members of the Coalition of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies, who have been guests in a house which they considered to be home for many decades. This situation was corrected, for since the memorable Rome and Buenos Aires Meetings, we have been guests no longer. Today we are completely home.
“This homecoming is attributable in no small measure to the architect of our house, Robert Wallerstein… and the effectiveness of his leadership. The homecoming may also be traced, and I hope to be allowed this change of metaphor, to the leadership of our Captain, Charles Hanly… Most important, he was instrumental in preventing another potential and disastrous lawsuit which could have scuttled us and the IPA. We are appreciative of Joe Sandler for not only his support of new groups as President of the IPA but also in protecting IPA standards, the cohesiveness of the IPA, and perhaps more importantly, lending… a learned edge to IPA affairs. To Horacio Etchegoyen whom we only know recently… [who] has made us aware of the vitality of psychoanalysis both in Latin America and in North America…
“However the significance of these events… has had profound repercussions within our own land. We are appreciative of the new working relationship that has been established with our colleagues from the American Psychoanalytic Association… [We] have come to work collaboratively and cooperatively to deal with the many problems which beset psychoanalysis in our own land… We have [also] become aware of the importance of our colleagues from north of the border … [with whom] we have developed a close relationship” (quoted in Basseches, 1993).
