William Alanson White Institute

Last updated

The William Alanson White Institute (WAWI), founded in 1943, is an institution for training psychoanalysts and psychotherapists that also offers general psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. [1] It is located in the Clara Thompson building of the Upper West Side of New York, New York. It was founded as a protest against the mainstream of American psychoanalytic thought, which was thought to be sterile, dogmatic, and constrictive by the psychoanalysts who founded the institute. WAWI also offers continuing education, through conferences, lectures, and symposia, and publishes Contemporary Psychoanalysis .

Contents

Background

William Alanson White was an American psychiatrist who became superintendent of the "Government Hospital for the Insane", later named St. Elizabeths Hospital, in Washington, D.C. He was known for humanizing the treatment of the mentally ill, doing away with restraints, and offering occupational therapy to patients. The founders of WAWI are Erich Fromm and Clara Thompson, joined by Harry Stack Sullivan, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, David Rioch and Janet Rioch.

WAWI takes an unashamedly progressive political stance on many issues. It emphasizes psychoanalytic activism in relation to issues of importance in culture and society, and addresses problems of living which are considered to be beyond the scope of classical psychoanalysis. WAWI is strongly influenced by the work of Sándor Ferenczi, a member of Freud's inner circle who pioneered the analyst's authentic use of himself in the consulting room, emphasizing the mutuality of the relationship between therapist and client.

Achievements

In 2001, the American Psychoanalytic Association presented its first Psychoanalytic Community Clinic of the Year Award to the Clinical Service of the William Alanson White Institute. WAWI publishes the journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis . The journal reports advances in the application of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis to depression, personality disorders, conflicts about sex and gender, and other psychological problems.

See also

Related Research Articles

Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.

Neo-Freudianism is a psychoanalytic approach derived from the influence of Sigmund Freud but extending his theories towards typically social or cultural aspects of psychoanalysis over the biological.

Herbert "Harry" Stack Sullivan was an American Neo-Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who held that "personality can never be isolated from the complex interpersonal relationships in which [a] person lives" and that "[t]he field of psychiatry is the field of interpersonal relations under any and all circumstances in which [such] relations exist". Having studied therapists Sigmund Freud, Adolf Meyer, and William Alanson White, he devoted years of clinical and research work to helping people with psychotic illness.

Relational psychoanalysis is a school of psychoanalysis in the United States that emphasizes the role of real and imagined relationships with others in mental disorder and psychotherapy. 'Relational psychoanalysis is a relatively new and evolving school of psychoanalytic thought considered by its founders to represent a "paradigm shift" in psychoanalysis'.

Stephen A. Mitchell was an American clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. His book with Jay Greenberg, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory (1983), became a classic textbook in graduate schools and post-graduate institutions, providing a general overview and comparison of several psychoanalytic theories. He was considered a leader of relational psychoanalysis. Mitchell helped to create the Relational Track of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smith Ely Jelliffe</span> American psychoanalyst

Smith Ely Jelliffe was an American neurologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst. He lived and practiced in New York City nearly his entire life. Originally trained in botany and pharmacy, Jelliffe switched first to neurology in the mid-1890s then to psychiatry, neuropsychiatry, and ultimately to psychoanalysis.

Freudo-Marxism is a loose designation for philosophical perspectives informed by both the Marxist philosophy of Karl Marx and the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud. Its history within continental philosophy began in the 1920s and '30s and running since through critical theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and post-structuralism.

Frieda Fromm-Reichmann was a German psychiatrist and contemporary of Sigmund Freud who immigrated to America during World War II. She was a pioneer for women in science, specifically within psychology and the treatment of schizophrenia. She is known for coining the now widely debunked term Schizophrenogenic mother. In 1948, she wrote "the schizophrenic is painfully distrustful and resentful of other people, due to the severe early warp and rejection he encountered in important people of his infancy and childhood, as a rule, mainly in a schizophrenogenic mother".

Clara Mabel Thompson, M.D. was a prominent psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and co-founder of the William Alanson White Institute. She published articles and books about psychoanalysis as a whole and specifically about the psychology of women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen Horney</span> American-German psychoanalyst (1885–1952)

Karen Horney was a German psychoanalyst who practiced in the United States during her later career. Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views. This was particularly true of her theories of sexuality and of the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis. She is credited with founding feminist psychology in response to Freud's theory of penis envy. She disagreed with Freud about inherent differences in the psychology of men and women, and like Adler, she traced such differences to society and culture rather than biology.

The Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute is a center for psychoanalytic research, training, and education on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. The institute provides professional training in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. It was founded in 1932 by Franz Alexander, a pioneer in psychosomatic medicine at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, who moved to Chicago at the invitation of Robert Maynard Hutchins, then president of the University of Chicago. Notable psychoanalysts that have been associated with the institute include Karl Menninger, Karen Horney, Thomas Szasz, Therese Benedek, Hedda Bolgar, Roy Grinker, Maxwell Gitelson, Louis Shapiro, Heinz Kohut, Arnold Goldberg, Jerome Kavka, Frank Summers, Ernest A. Rappaport, and Michael Franz Basch.

Philip M. Bromberg was an American psychologist and psychoanalyst who was actively involved in the training of mental health professionals throughout the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Breger</span>

Louis Breger was an American psychologist, psychotherapist and scholar. He was Emeritus Professor of Psychoanalytic Studies at the California Institute of Technology

Otto Allen Will Jr. was a U.S. psychiatrist whose work in psychoanalysis focused on treatment of patients with schizophrenia using intensive psychotherapy. He is also credited for his advancement of attachment theory and milieu therapy.

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly is a quarterly academic journal of psychoanalysis established in 1932 and, since 2018, published by Taylor and Francis. The journal describes itself as "the oldest free-standing psychoanalytic journal in America". The current editor-in-chief is Jay Greenberg.

The Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship is given annually by the Section on Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Psychology of the Canadian Psychological Association. The award is given for the best psychoanalytic book published within the past two years and is juried by a peer review process and awards committee.

Jay R. Greenberg is a psychoanalyst, clinical psychologist and writer. He holds a PhD in Psychology from New York University. He is a Faculty Member of the William Alanson White Institute, where he is also a training analyst and supervisor.

The International Institute of Depth Psychology (IIDP) is a private higher educational establishment in Kyiv, Ukraine. It specializes in psychoanalytic education, including theoretical psychoanalytic education, psychoanalytic training and supervision support for the beginning of practical psychotherapeutic activities.

Psychoanalytic institutes and societies in the United States are often linked together, though a distinction may be made between the functions of the institutes and the societies. Some local psychoanalytic organizations have both words in their title while others have only one or the other.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elisabeth Geleerd</span> Dutch-American psychoanalyst (1909–1969)

Elisabeth Rozetta Geleerd Loewenstein was a Dutch-American psychoanalyst. Born to an upper-middle-class family in Rotterdam, Geleerd studied psychoanalysis in Vienna, then London, under Anna Freud. Building a career in the United States, she became one of the nation's major practitioners in child and adolescent psychoanalysis throughout the mid-20th century. Geleerd specialized in the psychoanalysis of psychosis, including schizophrenia, and was an influential writer on psychoanalysis in childhood schizophrenia. She was one of the first writers to consider the concept of borderline personality disorder in childhood.

References

  1. "Our History". www.wawhite.org. Retrieved 2017-02-07.