Our History and Mission Statement

In 1973, the San Diego Psychoanalytic Society was accredited by the American Psychoanalytic Association as one of thirty-one constituent societies. The Board on Professional Standards of the American Psychoanalytic Association granted full accreditation to the Institute, as a center to conduct psychoanalytic training, in December 1977. Subsequently, the Society and Institute merged in 1989, bringing together in one organization psychoanalytic training programs, scientific programs and collegial activities for its members, as well as educational meetings and activities for the larger mental health and lay community. It currently has graduate members and members-in-training from diverse backgrounds and is a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, the International Psychoanalytic Association, and FIPAS, the organization of southern California psychoanalytic institutes and societies.

The San Diego Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (SDPSI) is a nonprofit corporation and is accredited by the California Medical Association, the California Psychological Association, the Board of Behavioral Sciences, and the Board of Registered Nurses as an approved provider of continuing education credits.

SDPSI has the following goals as a combined training institution and professional society:

1. To establish and maintain an accredited institution of learning in the field of psychoanalysis.
2. To provide training in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, in accordance with the standards for such training, as established by the American Psychoanalytic Association.
3. To promote research in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.
4. To provide professional growth and collegial activities for its members.
5. To foster the dissemination of psychoanalytic knowledge and the integration of psychoanalysis with allied fields and professions.
6. To facilitate the availability of affordable psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy to the community.
   

About Psychoanalysis

When people ask, "What is psychoanalysis?" they usually want to know about treatment, although the term may also refer to a body of theory and a method of investigation. As a therapy, psychoanalysis is based on the fact that individuals are often unaware of many factors that determine their emotions and behavior. These factors may create unhappiness, sometimes in the form of recognizable symptoms and at other times as troubling personality traits, difficulties in work or in love relationships, or disturbances in mood and self-esteem. Because these forces are unconscious, the advice of friends and family, the readings of self-help books, or even the most determined efforts of will, often fail to provide relief.

Psychoanalytic treatment helps the individual understand, emotionally as well as intellectually, these unconscious motivations that lie behind distressing feelings and behavior, as well as their historical origins. In an ongoing close partnership with a psychoanalyst, typically at a frequency of four or five times a week, a sustained and often intense relationship develops, in which the individual may re-experience underlying sources of difficulties in a way that is open to mutual and productive exploration. Through this process, he or she is enabled then to modify distressing patterns or reactions and thereby deal better with the realities of adult life. Psychoanalysis has also been adapted to the special capacities and vulnerabilities of children and adolescents, through the use of developmental understanding and techniques suitable to their respective stages of life.

Although some problems, such as reactions to stressful life events, can be handled effectively with short-term treatment, longstanding and complexly determined problems require long-term treatment. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a similar, though less intensive form of treatment than psychoanalysis, indicated and effective when more intensive treatment is not required. Both psychoanalysis and psychotherapy can be combined with psychoactive medication, when appropriate.