Click Here for:  Chapter 1: Letters of 1948–1951

Click Here for:  Chapter 2:  Letters of 1952

Click Here for:  Chapter 3:  Letters of 1952 -1953

Click Here for:  Chapter 4:  Letters of 1954

Click Here for: Chapter 5:  Letters of 1955

I am pleased to make available an extraordinary collection of correspondence between David Rapaport and Robert Holt.

When in response to a call from me, Bob Holt told me that he had a trove of correspondence between him and his mentor, David Rapaport, I was bowled over by the discovery of this treasure. In these letters, which date from 1948 through 1960, the two colleagues both support and challenge one another during a period of remarkable intellectual activity for both of them.

I was a resident at the Menninger School of Psychiatry from 1960 to 1962, years after David had left to go to Austen Riggs, but many members of the staff who were my mentors had trained with him, and all of the residents learned about his brilliance and contributions to the basic science of psychoanalysis. His Organization and Pathology of Thought was a foundational text for us, to be read and reread. Topeka was a place which many had left by the time I arrived: Bob Continue reading Announcing the Rapaport-Holt Letters

Late in July 2011, I had an unexpected call from Arnold D. Richards, M.D., an old acquaintance.  He asked if I happened to have any unpublished papers on psychoanalysis; if so, he offered to make them available to their most likely audience through International Psychoanalysis.  It happened that, for about a year, I had been trying to find a publisher for a collection of letters between David Rapaport and me during his final 12 years (1948–1960).  When I mentioned that to Dr. Richards, he at once expressed interest, and at last here we are. Continue reading The Rapaport-Holt Letters: A Master-Apprentice Collaboration on Psychoanalytic Theory

Farewell Party for the Rapaports, Aug. 1948. Back row: Maryline Barnard, Bob Holt, Elvira Rapaport, Louisa Holt. Front row: Lee Wexler, David Rapaport, Marty Mayman, Milt Wexler. (click to enlarge)

Topics Discussed:

• • “Stimulus Barrier”
• • Authoritarian personality
• • Ego autonomy and hierarchical structure
• • Application of psychoanalysis to the TAT
• • Underlying mechanistic vs. organismic assumptions
• • Kant vs. Whitehead

Continue reading Chapter 1: Letters of 1948–1951

George S. Klein, co-director of the Research Center for Mental Health. (click to enlarge)

Topics Discussed:

• • Channels of communication
• • Application of psychoanalysis to the Rorschach
• • Problems of structural theory
• • Projection and projective techniques
• • Autonomy and regression in service of ego
• • States of consciousness

Plus: A Note on George S. Klein

Continue reading Chapter 2: Letters of 1952

Robert R. Holt and Lester B. Luborsky, 1958. Taken at time of publication of Personality Patterns of Psychiatrists. (click to enlarge)

Topics Discussed:

• • Rapaport’s memories from arrival in U.S., his first job, and his first years at Menninger’s
• • Holt-Luborsky book Personality Patterns of Psychiatrists
• • Problems of selecting persons for training in psychiatry and psychoanalysis

Rapaport’s informal, often caustic comments about his first encounters with American psychiatrists and his first colleagues and the account of his early struggles make fascinating reading.

Continue reading Chapter 3: Letters of 1952–1953

Elvira Strasser Rapaport and Juliet Rapaport in their Stockbridge home, about 1954. (click to enlarge)

Topics Discussed:

• • Immediate memory and reminiscence
• • Theory of thinking: primary and secondary processes in relation to metapsychology and clinical measurement
• • Tension reduction

Plus: Staff Seminar Minutes

Continue reading Chapter 4: Letters of 1954

Merton M. Gill, Lester B. Luborsky, and Erik H. Erikson, 1954. (click to enlarge)

Topics Discussed:

• • Problems of research on psychoanalysis
• • Sigmund Koch and the APA’s Project A on theories of psychology
• • Rapaport’s decision to do section on psychoanalysis
• • Holt’s critique of Rapaport’s drafts of The Structure of Psychoanalytic Theory and his responses
• • Methodology of psychoanalysis

Continue reading Chapter 5: Letters of 1955