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The Chicago Institute for [[Psychoanalysis]], one of the oldest in the [[United States]], has been both a key institution in its own [[right ]] and a hub for westward expansion of the [[profession]]. Founded during the Great [[Depression]], in the 1940s the Institute served as a [[training ]] and credentialing institute for [[analysts ]] who then created organizations in [[other ]] cities, including Topeka, Los Angeles, and Detroit. Although ultimately most closely associated with the classical ego [[psychology ]] that dominated [[analysis ]] at mid-century, the Chicago Institute was distinctive for a certain [[tolerance ]] of divergent points of view. Its founder, Franz Alexander, promoted several unconventional [[ideas ]] and techniques; Heinz Kohut, after a long career as a purely orthodox [[analyst]], developed his influential [[self ]] psychology at the institute during the 1970s. Thomas Szasz, who became a iconoclastic critic of [[psychiatry]], originally trained at the Chicago Institute.

Organized psychoanalysis in the city dates to establishment of the Chicago [[Psychoanalytic ]] [[Society ]] in 1931. N. Lionel Blitzsten, the society's first president, was considered the first trained analyst in Chicago and a charming teacher who lacked administrative interests or skills. Establishment of the Chicago Institute fell to the Hungarian analyst Franz Alexander.

Alexander, who lectured at the [[University ]] of Chicago in 1930 but did not receive a warm welcome among psychiatrists there, returned to the city two years later to found and become first director of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. His [[objective ]] was to create a training center [[outside ]] a university setting that could also support research and [[clinical ]] activities. A charismatic [[figure ]] originally attached to the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, Alexander became a magnet for other European analysts, especially with the rise of [[German ]] [[fascism]]. Alexander modeled the center on the Berlin Institute, which itself had been founded along the lines of the great nineteenth-century research institutes designed to encourage [[intellectual ]] [[exchange]], debate, and collaboration. The Chicago Institute had a brick-and-mortar [[presence ]] from the beginning and boasted classrooms, a [[library]], and a dining room where staff lunches became an enduring feature, as they had in Berlin.

The organizational [[structure ]] that Alexander established at Chicago was in certain respects unique. He proved able to attract wealthy donors, some among his analysands, and early funding was provided by Alfred K. Stern, an executive with the Julius Rosenwald Fund, a Chicago-based philanthropy, and by the Rockefeller and Macy Foundations. Alexander created a lay board of trustees with fiscal [[responsibility ]] for the institute, which became a powerful source of funding, especially during the heyday of psychoanalysis. In addition, the institute was staffed by a small group of analysts with lifetime appointments and, in organizational [[terms]], was entirely [[separate ]] from the Chicago Psychoanalytic Society. This arrangement is [[thought ]] to have promoted the tolerance for divergent points of view that helped Chicago avoid the splits so common in psychoanalytic institutes in other cities.

Alexander directed the Chicago Institute for the best part of a quarter century. As an administrator he was regarded as authoritarian, albeit a benign despot, while he and the [[analytic ]] staff functioned as an oligarchy. Alexander's research, for which he secured large grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, was a considerable stimulus to [[psychosomatic ]] [[medicine]], which, although later engulfed by molecular psychiatry and other developments, came to [[enjoy ]] a high profile by the 1950s. Also involved in research were Thomas M. [[French]], until 1961 the institute's director of research, and the German analyst Therese Benedek, the [[author ]] of a major [[text ]] on psychoanalytic supervision and one of a [[number ]] of prominent [[female ]] analysts at Chicago.

In 1953, Alexander decided to leave the institute and he spent the last [[phase ]] of his career in Los Angeles, until his [[death ]] in 1964. To some extent his departure was a consequence of the advancing orthodoxy at Chicago that viewed Alexander's innovative [[treatment ]] options, such as analysis only [[three ]] [[times ]] per week and the [[concept ]] of a "corrective emotional [[experience]]," as out-of-step with techniques then in vogue.

Gerhart Piers effectively succeeded Alexander in 1956, for what became a fifteen-year administration. He exercised [[power ]] much as Alexander had done and used his influence to reengineer the training institute and introduce several other innovations, including a low-fee graduate [[clinic]]. He also paid greater attention to [[therapy ]] for [[children ]] and adolescents, an area that Alexander had neglected. Piers organized the [[Child ]] Therapy Training Program for pediatricians, nurses, and [[social ]] [[workers ]] and, in 1965, developed a Teacher Education Program.

To Heinz Kohut, a [[recent ]] graduate of the institute, Piers entrusted the task of reorganizing and revamping the curriculum. Kohut, who then worked closely with the forces shaping [[ego psychology]], created a core set of classes with a historical perspective, and went on to teach the two-year [[theory ]] course himself for many years. As was the [[case ]] at other institutes, the new curriculum at Chicago paid little attention to the [[work ]] of Melanie [[Klein ]] or the British analysts who were then developing [[object ]] relations theory.

Although George Pollock, who succeeded Piers in 1971, became a controversial figure late in his tenure, he was an energetic director who moved the Chicago Institute with a multi-pronged agenda. As a major administrative figure in both the American Psychoanalytic [[Association ]] and the American [[Psychiatric ]] Association, he raised the profile of the Chicago Institute through the effective exercise of power, though some thought his actions were based too much on a patronage-like [[system]]. In 1973, he engineered authorization from the [[State ]] of Illinois for the institute to offer a doctoral program in psychoanalysis. The same year, the Annual of Psychoanalysis began publication and became an influential yearly review. Pollock also established the Barr-Harris Children's Grief Center, which remains in operation today, to [[help ]] children cope with the [[loss ]] of a parent or sibling. Research meetings at the Institute regularly drew renowned analysts as speakers, and although analysis would soon to lose much of its privileged cache to [[biological ]] psychiatry, Charles B. Strozier wrote (2001), "I [[doubt ]] there has been a more lively intellectual atmosphere in the [[history ]] of psychoanalysis than at the Chicago Institute in the 1970s."

While Chicago remained Heinz Kohut's base throughout his career, his innovative brand of psychoanalysis was not warmly received by either Pollock or many of his colleagues at the institute. However, Kohut's deemphasis on [[drive ]] theory and his view that [[narcissism ]] was a separate [[developmental ]] path did win adherents—Arnold Goldberg, Charles B. Strozier, and Ernest Wolf at Chicago—and self psychology eventually established itself as a branch movement within psychoanalysis. Kohut died relatively young, at age sixty-seven in 1981, just ten years after publication of his The Analysis of the Self.

Although Pollock liberalized the oligarchic [[character ]] of the institute's staff and was a successful fundraiser through the lay board of directors, he could not stem the effects of a nationwide decline in the popularity of analysis as it ceased to attract large numbers of psychiatrists and [[patients]]. In 1988, after Pollock was sued by the son of a [[patient ]] who claimed that his [[mother]], a wealthy donor to the institute, had been financially exploited, he resigned. Subsequent reorganization in the wake of his acrimonious departure favored greater pluralism and more power extended to the faculty. Both Arnold Goldberg, who became next director in 1989, and Thomas Pappadis, who succeeded him in 1992, brokered policies that further democratized the institute. Jerome Winer, named director in 1998, continued to broaden the focus of the institute while attempting to enhance funding and to further cooperative ventures with universities.

As was the case in other cities, the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis survived the recalibration of analysis as a therapy and profession by creating for itself a [[place ]] within the larger context of [[mental ]] health [[practice]]. While the Chicago Society for Psychoanalysis, still a separate [[body]], is comprised primarily of medically trained analysts, the Chicago Institute serves a broader [[community ]] with a more inclusive mandate. In the early 2000s, the institute provides training programs for physicians, [[psychoanalysts]], social workers, and other professionals, and offers clinical and community services in a variety of venues for children, adolescents, and [[adults]].