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American Psychoanalytic Association

organization in the United States

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ2843014
Source-derived summary

The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) is an association of psychoanalysts in the United States. APsA serves as a scientific and professional organization with a focus on education, research, and membership development.

APsA comprises 34 training institutes and 38 affiliate societies. Individual mental health practitioners, academics, and researchers who are not affiliated with a psychoanalytic institute or society may belong as associate members. At the association's biannual meetings held in February and June, members convene to exchange ideas, present research, and discuss training and membership issues. APsA has over 3,000 members, including psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and experimental psychologists, and social workers.

History

APsA was founded in 1911 by Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, with the support of Sigmund Freud. Other founders of the organization include Adolf Meyer, James Jackson Putnam, G. Lane Taneyhill, John T. MacCurdy, Trigant Burrow, and G. Alexander Young.

APsA is the second oldest American psychoanalytic organization, after the New York Psychoanalytic Society which was founded a few months before by Abraham Arden Brill.

Membership

Membership in APsA, from its founding in 1911 until 1989, was limited to physicians.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “American Psychoanalytic Association” as organization in the United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1911, 1989—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1911. The account is most persuasive where American, Psychoanalytic and Association can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as organization in the United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2843014. VIAF identifies the subject as 134820550. The Library of Congress control number is n50059988. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911 and 1989.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “American Psychoanalytic Association”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow American Psychoanalytic Association primary sources, American Psychoanalytic Association archive and American research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “American Psychoanalytic Association”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from American Psychoanalytic Association” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.