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Division 29’s 40th Anniversary Celebration

A HISTORY OF DIVISION 29: 40 Years of Fellowship

Presented by Mathilda B. Canter on 8-15-08 as part of the Celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the Division of Psychotherapy, APA Convention, Boston, Massachusetts (pictures and slide show, followed by text of speech).

Readers may also be interested in the 1993 publication on the History of Division 29, also by Mathilda Canter.

Division 29 40th Anniversary Celebration: Exciting Times for 29

Preparing for this talk has been a delightful trip down memory lane for me, and I am grateful for the opportunity to tell you what I hope you will find a very interesting story.

Once upon a time, actually, at the APA Convention in 1960, a group of psychologists got together and formed an organization called Psychologists Interested in the Advancement of Psychology (PIAP), because they felt that there was no place in APA representing their interests.  They were a dedicated, energetic, enthusiastic group, who presented programs, gave workshops, and started to establish a journal, which they entitled Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice.

In 1963, PIAP was invited, by unanimous vote of its Board, to become a Section of the Division of Clinical Psychology – Division 12.  The invitation was accepted, and all PIAP members – about 600 of them by then – joined the Section, and for the first time in the history of the American Psychological Association, psychotherapy was officially recognized!  Their dues were $5 at the time.   In 1964, the first issue of Psychotherapy was published, with Eugene Gendlin as Editor.  The Editorial Board was quite impressive, including such respected psychotherapists as Rollo May, Erik Dreikurs, Sid Jourard, Hans Strupp, Clark Moustakus, James Bugenthal, Charlotte Buhler, Art Kovacs, etc… !

But as time went on, the Section leaders were not happy with Division 12, since they had difficulty having their programs accepted, were denied assistance in conducting elections, and in general felt that they were not receiving the support they had been led to expect.   After much discussion, in 1966, they drew up a petition to form a Division.  Among the   signers were Ron Fox, David Orlinsky, Ted Blau, Hans Strupp, Aaron Canter, Carl Zimet, Walter Klopfer, Al Ellis, Erika Fromm, Jules Barron, Stanley Graham, and Jack Wiggins…Familiar names?

The petition was submitted, and on September 4, 1967, the APA Council of Representatives established Division 29, the Division of Psychotherapy!!  And there was joy in Mudville, for finally practitioners had a home of their own in APA!!!  Our first President (1967-68) was Fred Spaner, who was followed by Ted Blau and then Vin Rosenthal.  Ron Fox served as our first Treasurer – a three year term, with Al Ellis and Max Siegel among the Board members.

As President Jules Barron wrote in the Psychotherapy Bulletin, in 1973: “Since our inception as a Division,…we have been a significant force in the psychological revolution.  While fighting for the legitimacy of professional psychology we have tried to maintain our scientific heritage.”  And we still do so!

It is impossible for me to tell a 40 year history in the 25 minutes allotted to me.  So I shall just say here that the Division has been very active in all of its major areas of interest: practice, teaching, training psychotherapists,    and research!  And I’d like to point out some highlights, many of which you probably are not even aware:

In addition to being the first home in APA for practitioners, 29 was

• First division to hold a Midwinter Meeting! – more about that later.
• First division to have a Central Office…..This was located first in the New York area, with Gloria Gottsegen in charge, but she had to resign when she left for Australia.  We moved to New Jersey, where Jack Krasner, and then Ben Fabrikant, with the help of Rhoda Schneider, took over.  How many of you remember that Kinderkamack Rd. address?  In 1986, the office moved to Phoenix and hired The Administrators (Pauline Wampler).  And since 1999 Tracey Martin has been taking great care of us!
• Division 29 was the first division to have a Hospitality Suite at Convention and hold conversation hours and programs there (in 1971, participants included George Albee, Albert Ellis, Hans Strupp, Al Mahrer…just to give you an idea of the caliber of presenters……not shabby!).
• First division to offer Student Travel Awards for paper submissions – (1971): Among the recipients I noted Vicky Mays, Lynn Rehm, and our President- elect, Nadine Kaslow!!!
• First division to have a Student Development Committee – more about that later.
• First division to establish an Ethnic Minority Affairs Committee!  Our first Chair was Maxine Rawlins, followed by E Rita Dudley (Grant), and then Lisa Porche-Burke.  Rita told me, when we met last month at a Policy and Planning Board retreat, that the 1985 Journal special issue: Psychotherapy with Ethnic Minorities, edited by Maxine and Rita, represented the first time any journal published an issue on ethnic minorities.
• We were one of the first, if not the first, to have a Committee for Women, established in 1974, with Joy Kenworthy as chair.  Actually, the Old Boys’ Board had turned down a request in 1971 by then-Secretary Leah Gold Fein, to form the committee, saying we didn’t need one.  But it only took us a few years to raise their consciousnesses and say yes in 1974.  With Rachel Hare-Mustin, Hannah Lerman, Annette Brodsky, Jacquie Resnick, Gloria Gottsegen, Aphrodite Clamar, and myself.. we were a very active and effective group, over the years, to the point where  in 1991 then Chair, Carol Goodheart, requested that the committee be sunsetted – it was – and that a Gender Issues Committee be established – it was, too!

The division was a leader in bringing practitioners into APA Governance!  In fact, Ted Blau was the first practitioner elected to serve as president of APA in 1977. Ted told me that many people said that Abraham Maslow was really the first practitioner/president, but that he AND MASLOW thought that that was ridiculous!!  After Ted came Max Siegel, Nick Cummings, Stanley Graham, Jack Wiggins, Ron Fox, etc., etc.

The division was also a leader in involvement over the years in practitioner issues like insurance (Jack Wiggins), professional schools, practice guidelines, education and training, coalition building among practice divisions, giving financial support to a broad spectrum of professional activities….

I have only 25 minutes, so I had to make some choices, and I am going to use the rest of my time telling you about a few Division 29 initiatives that I think were very special and that many of you may not know about:

MIDWINTER MEETINGS: Ron Fox told me that the new Division could not afford Board meetings in the sunny South, where they wanted to meet.  So what they did was hold workshops, and since they were a well-known and highly respected group of psychotherapists, they took in enough money to pay for their Board meetings! In 1970, President Vin Rosenthal had the idea that they really should invite the Division membership to join in, and so the first official Midwinter Meeting of the Division of Psychotherapy was held in Tampa, Florida in 1970.   It was publicized as “29 in the Sun,” and in fact it WAS – it was 29 degrees, breaking a 101 year record!! (During the 1978 Midwinter meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, chaired by Ron Fox, with me as Local Arrangements chair, we experienced a 100 year flood….but Division 29 people are usually very kind, and I remember so many comforting me by saying “You don’t have to shovel rain….”!!)

In 1981, Division 42, the Division of Independent Practice was established, and in 1982 we invited them to attend our Midwinter meeting in Monterey, California.  It was a very successful meeting, and there was such a great overlap in the membership of the two divisions, that we decided to share sponsorship, and the 1983 Midwinter Meeting at the Greenbrier in West Virginia was the first official joint meeting of 29 and 42.  In 1984 we met in San Diego, with Division 39 overlapping their meeting with ours.  And in 1987, at the request of Gloria Gottsegen, Division 43 was added as a limited sponsor.  If imitation is the highest form of flattery, we certainly were flattered, and as more and more Midwinter Meetings were held by other groups, the competition for attendance grew, agendas changed, and ultimately our regular Midwinter meetings came to an end.

STUDENT DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE In 1986, President Suzanne Sobel established this committee, with Ellin Bloch as chair, to recruit and focus on the special needs and interests of students.  At that time, our Ethnic Minority Affairs Committee was chaired by Lisa Porche-Burke.   That year, more than 275 student affiliate members were recruited, 49 of them ethnic minorities (in 1985, there had been only six.)  In1988, we created a Student Paper Competition, with the winners receiving a monetary award and the opportunity to present at the APA Convention. By then, we had 406 student affiliates, 100 of them ethnic minorities! Ellin Bloch and two very active student committee members, Scott Mesh and David Pilon, were invited by the then-Office of Educational Affairs to come to APA to discuss student recruitment, and Scott and David were invited to address the Division Leadership Conference.  Division 29 funded their work with APA.  And in August 1988, APAGS, the APA Graduate Students was formed….  and has become such an important part of APA and our pipeline!  I think we did well…..

DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM

In 1990, in response to the Persian Gulf Crisis, and under the leadership  of  President Norman Abeles, the Division sponsored a project run by Ellin Bloch  and Jon Perez of the LIFE PLUS FOUNDATION, which was providing psychological support and educational materials, at no cost to the families of those in the military.  Congress and the Department of Defense showed much interest in this program.  In August of 1990, Ellen McGrath, our President-elect, was invited to Fort Bragg to run a support group for the wives of servicemen.  On her return, she requested the establishment of a TASKFORCE ON TRAUMA RESPONSE AND RESEARCH; this was done, with Ellin Bloch and Jon Perez as co-chairs.  They developed a network of volunteer psychologists to help those affected by DESERT SHIELD and assess the outcomes of the interventions.

With PROJECT ME of Tucson, Arizona, the Division published materials disseminated through FAMILY LIFE UNITS of the Department of Defense.  And the Division funded a pilot study by Ellen McGrath and Harry Wexler examining data from military wives regarding attitudes and stress reduction.  Then, in 1991, Desert Shield became DESERT STORM, and significant contributions were made by Division 29 to the government and the public.

The Task Force was divided into three sections:

1. COMMUNITY INTERVENTIONS (co-chaired by Ellin Bloch and Jon Perez):   They mobilized support groups at community levels for families separated by the conflict; they served as consultants to local groups; and they acted as media spokespersons   As a measure of their impact, let me tell you that at the time of the L A RIOTS, the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the LA Director of the Department of Mental Health both called them in to help!!
2. EDUCATION SECTION (co-chaired by Alice Rubenstein and Dennis Embry):  They had been working on a book for principals and counselors in schools with lots of kids coping with military separations.  Division 29 provided $5,000 to fund this effort, and the material was sent to the Department of Defense and ALL military base schools in the United States and Europe – with a research questionnaire!
3. GENERAL APPLICATIONS IN TRAUMA (co-chaired by Harry Wexler and Wade Silverman): Their commitment was to research, their focus on how psychologists need to respond to natural and man-made disasters!

The division worked with the APA Practice Directorate to coordinate and develop educational material which was given to all members of the U. S. Congress, for distribution to their districts!  The Practice Directorate “forgot” to list the division as a co-sponsor, but we knew what we had done!

Charlie Spielberger gave Presidential Citations to Ellin Bloch and Ellen McGrath for their superb work in response to the Gulf Crisis.  And Jack Wiggins told me that it was as a result of working with Ellin Bloch, Ellen McGrath, and Jon Perez that he created the Disaster Response Network, as APA’S Centennial gift to the nation in 1992!

Through the years, the division has been active, at first as the sole voice for practice in the APA divisions.  In 1972, it instructed its Council Representatives to vote against giving Masters level psychologists full membership in APA.  The division was an organizer of coalitions to deal with the many areas of common concern.  Its Education and Training Committee, (when chaired by Tommy Stigall) became part of the Joint Commission on Professional Education in Psychology.  It was a leader in fighting for the establishment of Fellow criteria that were appropriate for practitioners.

The Division was a co-plaintiff with CAPPS (Committee for the Advancement of Psychological Professions and Sciences) in the Blues suit, supported the suit against the American Psychoanalytic Association, the fight for hospital privileges, etc.  We supported the establishment of the California School of Professional Psychology, The Wright State University School of Professional Psychology….etc., etc.

We have a proud history of publications from our very beginnings, monitored by a distinguished series of Publication Boards, an excellent journal, and a fine Bulletin.  Early in our history, we had Al Mahrer’s edited series of Creative Contributions to Psychology; an Early Audiotape Series,  brochures, position papers,  the History of Psychotherapy, which Don Freedheim edited for the Centennial, a Videotape Series on Psychotherapy , etc., etc.  We even had Fran Pepitone-Rockwell who was charged with deleting sexist language in our journal….!

It was fun looking at the Early Career Award winners!  The first winners, in 1986, were Annette Brodsky and Gerry Koocher!  Others were Jacquie Resnick, Gary VandenBos, Ron Levant, Raymond DiGiuseppe, E. Rita Dudley Grant, Alice Rubenstein, Lisa Porche-Burke, John Norcross, Abe Wolf, and Nadine Kaslow…. Now it’s the APF/Division 29 Early Career Award….we were pretty good at recognizing talent!

My time is up, so let me close by saying:  29 is STILL different from other divisions -it is in the forefront of helping to connect practice and research…..Jules Barron said it in 1973 – and in 2008  his words still hold true.

So this is the end of my Once Upon a Time story….and May the Division Live Happily – and Productively – Ever After……!!

Thank you.