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they are needed." But they were more interested in psychoanalytic
issues , and they applauded all discussions that might conceivably
"force leaders to be aware of psychoanalytic insights." In general,
however, the South Americans' opposition to fascism led them to be
leery of both right and left totalitarianism. Some "political" Americans
at the meetings talked of fascism in California - apparently unable
to differentiate between the systematic extermination of millions and
discriminatory laws that ought to be corrected.
It
is difficult to sort out theoretical from organizational issues in
any international organization. But the IPA has more problems than
other organizations of its kind. I was told that at the business
meeting they were informed of a class action suit by American psy–
chologists (for restraint of trade) against the American Psychoana–
lytic Association, the New York Psychoanalytic Association and the
Columbia Group, because they all bar nonmedical analysts from
membership. Ironically, the international Freudians have been down
on the Americans for this restriction (on theoretical grounds), but
now were being legally implicated (the IPA is the umbrella organiza–
tion for them all), and thus might have to "defend" a policy of which
they did not approve.
The intellectual components of international cooperation, of
course, are even more problematic. On the one hand, the psychoana–
lysts' expertise allows for the examination of unconscious processes
triggering aggression, fear, etc., which other "experts" lack . On the
other hand , they tend to jump from explaining individuals' psychic
phenomena to social ones, without accounting for the impact of
mediating institutions such as family, religion, or education; they in–
sist that they nevertheless are being scientific and, when pushed,
state or imply that Freud did the same thing. In their defense, it
must be said that the older generation is conversant with both orga–
nizational and intellectual history, which includes the institutionaliza–
tion offormer allegiances and conflicts (personal, organizational and
political). As Otto Kernberg commented, they all know their "maps,"
and thus interpret what is meant when a scientific term is used - by
American ego psychologists, Kleinians, South American Kleinians
with Lacanian traces, neo-Lacanians, "imaginative" French Freud–
ians as opposed to "scientific Americans," and so on. For the younger
generations, however, as one analyst quipped, it tends to be "my in–
stitute , Freud or wrong."
Theoretical differences had been incorporated in the program,
when for example, a clinical child analysis from a Mahlerian devel-
