History of the Center
The New Orleans-Birmingham Psychoanalytic Center, previously the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Institute, is the oldest psychoanalytic training center in the southeast. The Institute began informally as a Study Group in 1947, was formally approved as a Study Group by the Board on Professional Standards of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1949 and was fully accredited as an Institute in May, 1961. The Institute established itself as a rich resource for the treatment of adults and in 1972 it inaugurated a training program in the psychoanalysis of children and adolescents which is conducted in accordance with standards of the board on Professional Standards of the American Psychoanalytic Association and its Committee on Child Analysis. In 1975, the Board granted full accreditation to the program. Over the years the Institute has provided training of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, as well as consultation services to preschools, schools, and treatment agencies in greater New Orleans. The Institute also took a leadership role in the development of other psychoanalytic training resources in the region including those now existing in Dallas, Houston, Cincinnati, and Birmingham. Through these activities it has had a strong influence on established attitudes in mental health care that respect the uniqueness of each individual’s internal psychological world as they face challenges that, with treatment, ultimately lead to psychological healing and growth.
Central to the Center’s mission is the education of clinicians in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy through its Psychoanalytic Training Program and its Psychotherapy Training Program. Modest tuition for coursework is charged to sustain overhead, but all of the work for the Center, including teaching, is done on donated time. In addition all faculty and members pay dues, and contribute additional donations to maintain operations.
The newly reorganized Psychoanalytic Center has a long history of commitment to the city of New Orleans. Many of its faculty have served as clinicians, teachers, and supervisors on the faculties of Tulane University Medical Center, The Louisiana State University Medical Center (including Charity Hospital), and Touro Hospital. The vast majority have been volunteer teaching and supervising faculty. In addition the Center has always provided a referral service for those seeking psychoanalytic and psychodymanic treatment. Members of the Center’s faculty have also provided ongoing consultation services to local preschools, schools, and agencies. Consultations were provided at the Center for The Academy of Sacred Heart, the First Presbyterian Nursery School, the Jewish Community Center Nursery School, the Newman School, the Country Day School, and the Little Red School. On site consultations were provided for the Educational Research Treatment Center, the Protestant Children’s Home, St. Elizabeth’s, The St. Charles Presbyterian Church Nursery, and the Jewish Community Center Nursery School. Members of the Center’s faculty have also served on the boards of the Jewish Regional Children’s Service, the Jewish Community Center, and the Communal Nursery School. The Center has also sponsored educational events open to the public related to the interface between psychoanalytic thought and culture, including collaborative endeavors with the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Louisiana Opera. Historically, all of these community activities have been provided by Center faculty without charge, and some community educational programs were funded entirely by the Center.
The Center has also played a key role in the development of psychoanalytically oriented communities in Dallas, Houston, Cincinnati and Birmingham. In the l970s and l980s clinicians from Dallas and Houston commuted to New Orleans to receive adult and child psychoanalytic training. This training ultimately led to the establishment of independent psychoanalytic training programs in these cities. These programs in turn expanded psychoanalytic thought and it’s applications to schools, community agencies, and cultural institutions in their respective cities. In the 1990s the Center used evolving audiovisual technology to help the Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute towards its goal of establishing an independent child and adolescent psychoanalytic training program in Cincinnati. Also in the 1990s the Center extended its training activities to Birmingham, where the Birmingham Psychoanalytic Study Group was ultimately established.
Like the rest of New Orleans the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Center suffered significant losses in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In addition to sustaining structural damage to the Center’s building that holds its library, administrative office, and classrooms, all of its faculty and students were displaced. Within weeks of the hurricane, classes and supervision were resumed by telephone links to candidates who could participate. Several members of the faculty served as consultants to state and local agencies and school systems in Louisiana and Alabama, focusing on the psychological needs of displaced children and their families, and on the psychological needs of support personnel in affected areas.
During the years since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the Center is rebuilding, attempting to reinvigorate its role providing support and treatment in the community and regional leadership in education and training. With several of its faculty relocating to Birmingham, the Center was reorganized as the New Orleans–Birmingham Psychoanalytic Center in 2006. The New Orleans patient referral service reopened in 2006, as did New Orleans based community programming including the Psychoanalytic Cultural Film Series. The first post-Katrina psychoanalytic training class began in September 2007. Classes now consist of students from New Orleans and Birmingham piloting Internet technology to conduct joint classes in both cities. In addition the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program resumed classes in September 2008.
There is considerable excitement about the beginning of the Regional Consortium for Child Analytic Training beginning in September, 2009. Internet technology will be used to conduct distance-learning classes for students in New Orleans, Birmingham, Dallas, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Miami. The largest contingent of child and adolescent supervising analysts remain within the New Orleans-Birmingham Center. Our Center along with the Cincinnati Institute are the only two sites among these sites accredited to train child and adolescent psychoanalysts, both will share in the administration of this program. The goal of this Consortium is not only to reinvigorate child and adolescent psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in New Orleans, but also to stimulate the growth of child and adolescent psychoanalytic Institutes and Centers in participating cities across the region.
Despite the destruction of Hurricane Katrina the New Orleans–Birmingham Center aspires to reassert its role as a regional center for the training of clinicians sensitive to the psychological needs of adults, adolescents, and children. Through such training applications of psychoanalytic thought can be reinvigorated for the benefit of the community through clinical work, community programming, and consultative services to schools, agencies, and courts.