Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis

The Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis is a center for psychoanalytic research, training, and education that is located on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. The institute provides professional training in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. It was founded in 1932 by Franz Alexander, a pioneer in psychosomatic medicine at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, who moved to Chicago at the invitation of Robert Maynard Hutchins, then president of the University of Chicago. Notable psychoanalysts that have been associated with the institute include Karl Menninger, Karen Horney, Thomas Szasz, Therese Benedek, Hedda Bolgar, Roy Grinker, Maxwell Gitelson, Louis Shapiro, Heinz Kohut, Arnold Goldberg, Jerome Kavka, and Michael Franz Basch.

The Chicago Institute is the second oldest in the United States, preceded by New York five months earlier, and followed by Boston and Washington. It was incorporated on February 25, 1932, with Franz Alexander as the first Director. Alexander’s first associate was Karen Horney, who had been another student at the Berlin Institute. Alexander and Horney appointed three more to form the first staff. They were: Thomas French as Lecturer and Clinical Associate, Helen McLean and Catherine Bacon as Clinical Associates. There were also two visiting lecturers: Karl Menninger and Lionel Blitzstein.

From the beginning, the Chicago Institute has nurtured innovative, and occasionally revolutionary, approaches to the psychoanalytic theory and practice originally formulated by Sigmund Freud in Vienna. Alexander wanted to experiment with frequency of sessions, length of treatment and how the analyst should optimally conduct himself. He published his ideas in several books, and became an outspoken advocate for such experimentation. Alexander left Chicago for California in 1955. He was succeeded by Gerhard Piers as the Director of the Institute. The group of analysts who became the dominant voices at the Institute had been greatly influenced by Lionel Blitzstein, who had analyzed them all. Though Blitzsten had been on the early faculty of the Institute, he and Alexander were at odds. With his ascendance the Institute reinstated practices that were considered more in line with the dominant American view of depth and intensity of psychoanalytic treatment. The intellectual leader of this group was Maxwell Gitelson. Joan Fleming became Dean of Education, and the curriculum emphasized a more thorough historical approach to teaching psychoanalysis.

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