New York Psychoanalytic Institute & Society
Programs and Activities

Historical Notes

World War I brought a temporary slackening of the Society's activities. Shortly after the war, however, a sizeable contingent of psychiatrists from New York arrived in Vienna to further their psychoanalytic education via personal analysis with Freud. On their return to New York, these analysts, together with Brill, formed a nucleus of teachers and leaders within the New York psychoanalytic community. This nucleus was gradually augmented by other analysts, both American and European, who had been formally trained in the institutes of Berlin, Budapest, and Vienna. In the years following World War I the more experiences analysts within the group provided the only psychoanalytic instruction then available in the United States through their individual consultations, private seminars, and personal analyses. In response to a growing demand for more formal instruction, The New York Psychoanalytic Society organized its first series of lecture courses in the fall of 1922. These proved so successful that in the following the Society appointed its first Educational Committee, the better to organize and improve the teaching functions of the Society, especially as they applied to physicians wishing to become psychoanalysts. Throughout the twenties, the Educational Committee developed training producers for psychoanalysis. These remained within a relatively informal framework although beginning in 1925, it included the basic elements of psychoanalytic education: personal psychoanalysis, seminars and case supervision.

As the demand for psychoanalytic knowledge and training steadily increased, the members of The New York Psychoanalytic Society, and their Educational Committee, established The New York Psychoanalytic Institute on September 24, 1931. It was the first psychoanalytic training center in the United States. The Institute has been educationally autonomous and financially self-supporting since its inception. Its purpose, according to its constitution, was, and has remained:

To advance the development of psychoanalysis based on the scientific discoveries of Sigmund Freud, to teach psychoanalysis, and to promote scientific psychoanalytic education and research.

The Educational Committee is responsible for the undergraduate psychoanalytic training program which is accredited by the Board on Professional Standards of the American Psychoanalytic Association.