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PARTISAN REVIEW
was occupied by the entire Executive Council - twenty-four persons,
ranging from preceding to future presidents to honorary vice-presidents,
to nine vice-presidents, a number of secretaries, delegates, committee
chairmen, and others representing three continents and four major lan–
guages. "It's our politburo," an analyst whispered to me. "They're rear–
ranging the deck chairs on the
Titanic,"
commented another.
Indeed, the two presidential candidates, Otto Kernberg, M.D. and
Charles Hanly, Ph.D., are very dissimilar in background and training.
Kernberg, born in Vienna, educated and analyzed in Chile and now at
the Columbia Institute for Psychoanalytic Training, is one of the most
prolific and respected theorists and researchers. Since, among other
things, he introduced Melanie Klein's object relations theory in this
country, he antagonized the so-called American ego psychologists.
(I
was
told, for instance, that a candidate wanting Kleinian analysis in San
Francisco could not get it.) Hanly, an erudite Canadian philosopher
turned analyst, had no such powerful enemies. And he had been particu–
larly helpful in facilitating the North American psychoanalytic psycholo–
gists' recognition by the IPA. This explains, at least in part, why
Kernberg was defeated at home and squeaked in only as a result of his
international renown. But external politics as well had an impact, for
instance in Argentina, where Kernberg allegedly had backed a so-called
fascist psychoanalytic institute over a "clean" one, and in France, because
.he is supposed to have supported a British presidential candidate over a
French one two years ago. Thus the German-speaking members alone
were overwhelmingly for Kernberg. And much time was spent on
discussing the regrettable fact that a box with a few hundred votes from
Argentina had been lost in the mail. Did the London office fail to mail
ballots in time? To all the eligible members? Or was this really due to
the Argentineans' mail service? They should hold another election, said
some. This was done with malice aforethought, said others. Another
election is too expensive, said yet another. Still, no one knew what the
lost mailbox contained. Eventually it surfaced in Miami and the
Executive Committee voted to destroy its contents.
Inevitably, as the newly admitted (mostly psychologists') societies
received the blessing of the membership by being formally initiated into
the IPA, there were emotionally charged acceptance speeches, ranging
from expressions of thanks and gratitude to recalling twenty-seven years
of "life on the fringes," from feeling outcast and humiliated to
satisfaction at being rescued from "second class citizenship." This kind of
melodrama, however, made me ask a number of people what sort of
benefit belonging to the IPA would have for their practices, on their
