Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

theories. 87 The prevailing ethos within the BP-AS Scientific meetings that formed a central
part of psychoanalytic institutional life was to link back directly to Freud, a psychoanalytic
form of apostolic succession 88 , a state of affairs still prevalent until the late 1970s, where
‘there was no means of challenging what was outmoded or wrong’ (Arden 1998: 2).
The pattern in the USA differed. Each ‘society’ had their own form of ‘apostolic
succession’ related to the founding fathers of the individual society (Kirsner 2000) and
departure from ‘orthodox psychoanalysis’ led to expulsion or non-recognition by the APsaA
as an official psychoanalytic society. Early psychoanalytic heretics from the 1940s included
Sullivan, Thompson, Horney and Fromm. 89 Two significant changes occurred in the 1980s
that altered the shape of psychoanalysis. One was the emergence within psychoanalytic
institutions of new generations of psychoanalysts who were no longer part of some ‘quasi-
apostolic succession’ and who were therefore able to envision psychoanalysis differently,
leading to recognition of a pluralistic approach within psychoanalysis by the late 1980s
(Gedo 1991). 90 The other was a legal challenge in the mid-1980s, when the requirement of
a medical qualification for analysts was dropped opening psychoanalytic training to
associated disciplines. 91
87
Winnicott and Balint refused to be identified with any one group. The Middle group started simply as a
number of people who refused to identify with Anna Freud or Melanie Klein in the ‘controversial discussions’,
rather than as a defined group.
88
Balint was the first analyst to use this term in 1948 in his review of psychoanalytic training (Balint 1948,
1954).
89
Horney and Fromm later related psychoanalysis to Zen Buddhism, although this was not the reason for their
expulsion. It could be argued that by being freed from the restricted confines of the psychoanalytic society
they were able to give freer reign to their thinking that encompassed religious perspectives. An overview of
this period is found in Schwartz’s chapter ‘New theory, new splits: Psychoanalysis in the United States II’
(Schwartz 1999), although the most detailed account is found in Hale (Hale 1995b). When Grotstein and
others began to adopt Kleinian and Bionian concepts in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, they were also
threatened with expulsion from the APsaA (Grotstein 2009c).
90
Gedo dates this to around 1980.
91
Other suitably qualified professionals, such as clinical psychologists, were now able to train as analysts.
43