This was also the title of my presidential address, spoken during a gala banquet at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta on October 25, 1986. In deference to the festivity of the occasion, I limited myself to 20 minutes. Afterwards, Mark Stern asked me to publish the text in this issue of VOICES. I was pleased at the invitation, not only because of the significance of this issue, but also because of all I had left out of the address. So, this is an edited and expanded version of that presentation.

Back in the 40s, I heard the radio broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow and Studs Terkel. They were different because they talked with people about what had happened to them. Their guests recountings were unusually open and honest, as though they knew they were speaking to a larger audience and for posterity. To be reflective and to think historically is a special mode of thought. It requires a time perspective which is uncommon in everyday life and view of self as seen from a distant vantage point. This has all the problems of a creation in the now of a narrative about the then. Perhaps, what makes life bearable is the fact that one can have a secret life and never tell anyone. Speaking to someone requires a subtle but certain selectiveness. There are always shadow identities to be safeguarded. Thus, both privately and publicly, people alter their recitation in ways that protect themselves from scorn. Pride figures strongly in revelation. Often, what is said is less important than what is not said. Relegated to silence is that which ought not to have been. Nevertheless, most people don't seem to question their memory, or their truth. They declare their opinion as fact and want to he taken at face value. What made a difference in the broadcasts of Murrow and Terkel was their way of interviewing. They carried a broader perspective and enlarged the truth of the facts recited. Further, they were willing to plunge into feelings about facts. Thus, they generated the kind of dialogue which made it safer for their guests to reveal some of that secret life which undergirds public life. Often, they were able to point out the historical significance of what was being said. Their guests grew in stature as they continued to speak, becoming more themselves and more a part of what was.
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The history that has the most to offer originates in rich personal experience. People have always told their stories to others. Throughout the ages, history has been passed on by someone who, through imagination, formed a view of change over time which could explain what had happened. The telling of a tale affects the consciousness of teller and hearer alike and effects change in the community itself. With the advent of printing, history generated historians and became a matter of record. Ruling powers came to have a vested interest in history, and moved to defend or promote their own versions of events. Oral history from the bottom upshaded into written history from the top down. Today, we have the history of high-school texts: brief, concise, and definitive. While official, it is also highly selective, and subject to bias in the service of political and national purposes, The way the past is viewed has consequences for the way the present is structured. The past, as a matter of official fact, can be used ideologically to freeze the present. While most people may lack a sense of history-their cultural history and their life history-still they are, to a large extent, governed by it.

It seems to me that Murrow and Terkel rediscovered oral history, giving it prominence as a lived history, obviously relevant, though often challenging of the official version and unsettling to incorporate. Personal relationships are not apt developments. History is best recounted by those present at the time; only they knew the relationships, felt the novelty, and appreciated the importance of what was happening. To be sure, both kinds of history are prone to distortion. Nevertheless, oral evidence is trustworthy for the unique event which makes a powerful and lasting impression. It is the dialectic between the teller of the story and the inquisitiveness of the listener which gives oral history its real dimension. Ultimately, such a history is an improvement over the official version; it is a more critical and conscious history that involves tellers in the creation of their own history.

The analogy with psychotherapy is close. How people live with their past and try to make sense of their present is the essence of psychotherapy. For the most part, an oral history of the patients life, the story told in his or her own way and in his or her own good time, is what we have to go on as psychotherapists. Whether or not the events recounted by the patient match the events as described by someone else is beside the point. We deal with subjective realities, the patients and our own, which are no less real when contradicted. For example, patients manifest their abuse as children; their parents the source of official family history say it never happened. The parents version is contributory, but not preemptive. In this drama, we as therapists are historical revisionists, given to the task of enlarging the patients past so as to better understand the present dilemma. In all, a knowledge of our past is valuable when used to good ends in the present. Each age, each generation, each person has its own truth. To adopt a historical view and to discover ones very own truth is to situate oneself in a community of people and to affirm ones self in that community. Ultimately, the best end may be a celebration of individuals, with feelings of sympathetic understanding and gratitude.
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With this unspoken prelude, I turn to the Academy and my address. Millie Broughton, who threw the party for us all in Atlanta, gave me a warm and glowing introduction. (What follows is dated to that time.) There are now members of the Academy who were not yet born when the organization was formed. Some of them have wondered and others have asked how the Academy began. Like them, I was not around at the beginning; I wondered too. What I had heard were some idle fragments, some vague attributions, and some tall tales, some of which were contradictory. I got curious about the origins of the Academy as the beginning of our history. Even though our early documents are not readily available, I knew that I could take a common path; that is, to ferret out the printed facts of the time and draw an official conclusion. That was not the path I chose. Rather, in the spirit of oral history, I chose to ask persons who might have been present at the time to tell me what they knew about the formation of the Academy. This approach relied upon proximity, memory, and judgment. Happily, thought processes, emotional highlights, and a sense of personal presence all endure into old age. Also, it is easier to remember successes than failures and the Academy was a smashing success at the very beginning. Less certain was judgment in the assessment of the relative contributions of contemporaries.

What I got were stories and I am going to tell you a story about the stories told to me. The truth is, the full stories can no longer be told because some voices are stilled by death, others are lost to our hearing, and still others no longer remember so well what did happen way back then. At the summer workshop at Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1983 I announced my continuing interest in the topic to Council and asked for their help. I got the names of people who could, possibly, help me in my search. Subsequently, I corresponded with 25 persons, 14 of whom were past presidents, essentially as follows: I write to you on the presumption that you have knowledge, either fact or opinion, which you would be willing to share for this purpose. Please do not assume that what you know is common knowledge; to the contrary, assume that your information is unique. If you do not have information, but know of someone who does, please send me their name and I will write to them, I attached to this letter a list of names to whom the letter was sent in order to avoid duplications. As it turned out, that list of names itself stirred a lot of memories. One guy, bless his heart, Tom Leland out in Hawaii, wrote me back and said that list was like a remembrance of Christmases past. What I allowed was that they could write to me or call me collect if they preferred. The Academy, though, is a diverse and creative bunch; one, by the name of Sol Rosenberg, sent me a tape in which he talked to me from documents he had at hand and from his memory. Others, like Jules Barron and Dick Felder, sent me not only a letter but also documents that they had in their possession. Dick sent his presidential address of 12 years ago at Cleveland, in which he rendered an impressionistic history of the Academy. With still others, like Irma Lee Shepherd and Larry Tirnauer, an interview was arranged and I took notes. From the first round, I had 20 replies. A second round of letters was sent to 15 persons nominated by the first 25 and, as of last week, I received five more replies. This procedure generated a wealth of information. I was surprised by how many people took the time to write me two and three and four page letters, some of them five and six and seven page letters! A few were largely illegible, but I could see that a lot of earnest effort had gone into their composition. So much came through that the remainder of my talk tonight will be like the cherry on top of the dessert at the end of the cafeteria line.
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All you will get tonight is just that one morsel. I intend to describe my findings for publication. I also intend to revive the office of historian in the Academy. What I would like is to deposit my accumulated information in an archive for anyone's possible later use. History, as record, is swayed by inventive reporting, such as this presentation. I hope that this version will spark interest and rouse others to contribute their own views. This is the 31st anniversary of the Academy and Id like to set our organization into historical context. The American Academy of Arts and Science, for instance, was founded in 1780. The American Orthopsychiatric Association was founded in 1924. Our nearest organizational relative, The American Group Psychotherapy Association, was formed in 1942. Our Academy was formed in 1955 and the American Academy of Psychoanalysis was formed in 1956, et cetera.

Now for the cherry, who did it? From my replies, when one name is mentioned, it is Henry Guze or Jules Barron. When two names are mentioned, they are still Jules Barron and Henry Guze. When three names are mentioned, they are Jules Barron, Henry Guze, and Albert Ellis. There is no coherent clustering in my data beyond these three, so these are the three. (As an aside, from formal history, their prominence was confirmed in l964 during the Conference held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City; the minutes, which were published in the newsletter of January, 1965, record awards for the founding of the Academy to Albert Ellis, Jules Barron, and Henry Guze.) Now here's where I come down in the midst of this. Al Ellis is still amazingly active. At 73, he has published 50 books, hundreds of articles, and he continues as Executive Director of his Institute in New York City, working approximately 100 hours a week. Jules Barron, at 63, has contributed widely to professional and organizational interests. He has held numerous offices in the Academy and is currently President of the Division of Clinical Psychology of the American Psychological Association.

In those early days, anyone could have told you about Henry Guze. Currently, he is the least known of our founders. Henrys widow, Vivian Guze, is still an active member of the Academy. I want to tell you some more about Henry Guze because the Academy owes him a debt of gratitude for his generativity and his continuing influence in our affairs. I talked with Vivian during her recent hospitalization in New York; we talked quite a while over the phone and she told me a lot about Henry. He was an only child whose mother dedicated him to peace. She brought him up like a prince. When he was a lonely 12-year-old in Newark, New jersey, he constructed cities, each with a name and a population. When kids were born in his imaginary universe, he would enroll them in a city and give them an occupation. He had a lot of vision and incubated everything in his head. Much later, Henry earned a doctorate in Physiological and Comparative Psychology at New York University. The topic of his dissertation was maternal, sexual, and hoarding behavior of rats. Several people who knew Henry well described him as a Renaissance man, a Gemini, and as a very private person. Henry and Jules both taught at Long Island University and they commuted together by car, sharing ideas and aspirations. At that time, about 1953, psychoanalysis was the legitimate therapy. McCarthy was in his ascendancy on the national political scene. Henry had to help mankind and he became an unorthodox practitioner. He was afraid that people, like himself, might get caught in a tidal wave of political oppression. He wanted to form an organization of psychotherapists for their own souls, for the care, feeding, and protection of psychotherapists. Margaretta Bowers told me that Henry was a king maker; he put other people in the front seat and he took the back seat. Elizabeth Valerius wrote to me that her husband, John Warkentin, was asked to be the first president; he said someone famous should have that office and suggested Carl Rogers. I have a letter from Carl and he wrote:
I felt embarrassed to accept the nomination for president of an organization in which I had had no part, but I was persuaded by three elements. It seemed to me a very wise thing to try to bring psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers together those who are involved in or interested in therapy. It seemed to me this would be narrower but better than the American Psychiatric Association. The second point that I liked was that the title, The American Academy of Psychotherapists, seemed to me to be an excellent one. I thought it had class and drawing power. The third element that persuaded me was that I thought I might provide a somewhat unifying force in the organization and might help to attract members. So I agreed to stand for nomination and was elected.
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Here's another paragraph from Carl's letter:
One other item of no importance: John Warkentin spent a lot of the Academy's money to have a beautiful free-form stone paper-weight made with the AAP insignia and an inscription to me as the first President from 1956 to 1858. I dont go for such trophies, though I prize this one and have kept it ever since on my desk. What appalled me was the price, which I have forgotten.

In 1954, Henry called a meeting in Carl Roger's room in the Barbizon Plaza hotel in New York City. Apparently, the American Psychological Association was meeting in New York and Henry used the occasion to get some people together. Tom Leland, in an editorial in the first issue of VOICES in 1965, wrote that there were 10 or 12 rather unusual people, all leaders, who came together. There: was a big struggle between Jules and Henry on one side and other interest coalitions on other sides. Some factions lost their cause and didn't stay around very long. But there was a common sense among those who remained that here at last was a place where being completely honest about who they were they did not have to fear or hide. They left knowing there were other people like themselves out there upon whom they could rely in a time of crisis. Larry Tirnauer, whose interview by Mark Stern was published in a 1983 issue of VOICES, stated that Henry Guze was the major force in the founding of The American Academy of Psychotherapists. Larry described him as a charming man with a kind of earthiness and courage. One of the wonderful qualities (he) had (was) his willingness to be with people around feeling places that must people are scared to be around and all of our training doesn't really prepare us for (p. 87). Later, Larry told me of an occasion when he was feeling murderous and Henry was the only person who would sit down with him and delve into his murderousness. Tom Leland, in that first issue of VOICES, wrote: Henry Guze was never elected to any office. He served as the parliamentarian, attended every E.C. meeting, vigorously enforced Robert's Rules of Order, and maintained the history of the Academy for new officers and E.C. members. Dick Felder, in his presidential address, said:

Henry Guze brought his energy to AAP from the moment of its inception until his death. He was intensely personal with each of us, his wisdom was ubiquitous, and he was a genius at working with patients. He served as chairman of the most difficult and crucial committees because he was the one who could do it. All of us loved him.

I learned from several sources that Henry wrote the constitution of the Academy and of two other organizations: The Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, and The Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. By inference, with classical initiative, he formed a protective group around each of his areas of interests psychotherapy, sex, and hypnosis. In 1963, Henry got a serious staph infection. In 1964, he was out of the hospital and subsequently had several heart attacks. He died in July of 1970, technically from a heart attack, at the age of 51.
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Taking a different tack now, I was amazed in my research to see how many names I recognized of these charter members of the Academy and how many of them went on to later fame in the world at large. I pondered what it was about this movement that attracted and held the attention of so many creatively talented persons. I have discerned three salient features. First, there was a high standard of membership.. It was easier to hold in those days because the field was much smaller, limited mainly to doctoral-level practitioners in a small number of professions. To quote from Dugald Arbuckle: The Academy was different than any other organization Id been involved in . . . a group of highly professional revolutionaries who were maybe off the beaten track but who knew what they were doing; they were people I admired. And, quoting now from Carl Whitaker: Nobody could get in who hadn't had psychotherapy . . . the guts and the head . . . you have to do something about yours to belong. These standards fostered a collegiality, a mutual respect, and a readiness to trust which supported the call to openness and sharing which was sounded at the first meeting of the Academy. A second feature was the calling together of psychotherapists with different backgrounds of education and training, emphasizing their commonality as therapists instead of their parent disciplines. Irving Shelsky told me of various schools of thought, set side by side . . . a way of breaking out of the loneliness of the individual therapist, interacting with others . . . unprotected by the sameness of staying with ones own kind. The third feature, and this was when the Academy reached a critical mass: My images are mixed imagine simultaneously melting down and taking off like a rocket. There was a new kind of professional meeting which came to be called a workshop. It was created by those who attended the first meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1956, which was chaired by George Dolger. At that time, Carl Rogers held an academic post at the University of Wisconsin and Carl Whitaker was returning there. The workshop opened ones work with a patient to group hearing and comment, as Rogers had done previously in the Counseling Center at the University of Chicago. To this was joined the multiple therapy pioneered by Carl Whitaker and John Warkentin during their wartime service at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which brought together two or more therapists with one or more patients. This fusion of separate lines of therapeutic development had one patient, for instance, being treated simultaneously by several therapists while other therapists sat around and watched. All of this to be processed later by those present. To appreciate the novelty of this development, it is necessary to remember that most therapy in those days was about as secret as what goes on in the bedroom. Nobody else was allowed in there, and whoever was in there didn't come out and talk about it. Suddenly there was something new under the sun! Therapy and the therapist were out in the open. In rump session, how they worked as therapists was related to who they were as persons. This focus on the person of the therapist became the central dynamic of the therapy not the theory, not the school, not the technique, but rather the person of the therapist.

Howie Halpern noted:
It was terrifying to be exposed to all that creative craziness, and to expose how I worked. I saw members of the Academy, with great courage, dare to take risks, to step off the ledge, to open themselves to attack and criticism. I saw us learn from each other and bring our new insights back to our homes all across the country, like bees from different locales bringing nectar from a particularly dazzling flower garden back to their home hives. I was never more anxious and never grew so much.

Sol Rosenberg said:
I was convinced that the loons of the world had been set loose long enough to flit into Madison, However, I began to quiet my biased self, listened and absorbed, and went away from the workshop experience profoundly excited and with the incubation of important personal and professional changes already on the way.

Al Jasnow noted:
It was mind-blowing. I consider the summer workshop the key to what the Academy has to offer best. Even now, addicted as I am, I still approach the workshop with mixed feelings of excitement, anticipation, and fear that lightning may strike again. Truth can hurt, particularly truth about ones self, but it does not kill.

Mark Stern noted:
The Academy struck gold . . . in its people . . . they left both APAs to join.