Our History

The Association for the Psychoanalytic Study of Psychopathology (APSP) was founded in response to growing concerns about the direction of contemporary psychoanalysis. While psychoanalysis was once the dominant framework for understanding and treating mental illness in the 20th century, the field has, in recent decades, become increasingly detached from its clinical and scientific foundations.

This shift has coincided with the rise of postmodernist philosophies, which have emphasized relativism, subjectivity, and skepticism toward psychiatric diagnosis and empirical science. While these intellectual currents have stimulated important debates within the field, they have too often displaced psychoanalysis’s original purpose: the rigorous investigation and treatment of mental disorders.

As psychoanalysis moved away from diagnostic clarity and clinical specificity, it began to lose its footing in mainstream mental health care. Its marginalization has been compounded by a reluctance among many psychoanalysts to engage with the findings of neuroscience, psychiatry, and clinical psychology. In some circles, this has resulted in a dismissal of diagnosis altogether and a rejection of the medical model—a stance that distances psychoanalysis from the empirical study of psychopathology and, ultimately, from the patients it seeks to serve.

APSP was created to respond to this moment. Founded in the spirit of Freud, Otto Kernberg, and John Gunderson, the organization reflects a tradition of psychoanalysts who were deeply committed to the integration of psychoanalysis with clinical psychiatry and the scientific study of mental illness.

It serves as a space for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and mental health professionals who believe that psychoanalysis must remain relevant to the real suffering of patients—that it must take seriously the study of psychiatric illness, particularly personality disorders and other complex conditions. It is based on the conviction that psychoanalysis can and should be a partner to scientific medicine, not its ideological opponent.

By restoring a focus on psychopathology, APSP aims to revitalize psychoanalysis as a clinical discipline—one that is both humanistic and scientifically informed, and one that contributes meaningfully to modern mental health care.