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GAP
Is Organized
When the gathering broke up, it was agreed to invite additional
psychiatrists for another meeting the following night, May 27.
The smoke was even thicker, the air of excitement more pronounced,
in the Menninger hotel suite on this second night. Present
were Drs. Ivan C. Berlien, Francis J. Braceland, O. Spurgeon
English, Malcolm J. Farrell, George N. Raines, Leon J. Saul,
Charles W. Tidd, and S. Bernard Wortis. The participants
seemed to sense that a significant page in American psychiatric
history was being written in that hotel room.
The new
recruits were in overwhelming agreement with the original group
that there was urgent need for an action organization,
that it should be in no sense a rival to the APA and that it
should be small, informal, highly selective, and flexible.
After discarding several suggestions for rather pretentious
titles, a name was agreed upon: The Group for the Advancement
of Psychiatry--GAP for short.
Dr. William
C. Menninger was unanimously elected chairman and Dr. Henry
W. Brosin secretary of the Group.
The immediate
question now was: What, precisely, could the newborn GAP
do to advance psychiatry? What, for instance, could its
members do to push the APA into a more dynamic, constructive
role? An opportunity for direct action would present itself
on the following day, when election of APA officers was scheduled.
Never, since the APA's founding in 1944, had the recommendations
of a nominating committee been countered with an opposing slate.
A proposal was put before the assembled GAP's (as they came
to be called), who were sprawled on chairs, the twin beds, and
the floor of the Palmer House room: Why not utilize this
election on the morrow, traditionally a cut-and-dried formality,
as a dramatic signal of the new direction in American
psychiatry? Among the officers to be elected were three
members of the nine-man APA Council--one third of whom were
chosen each year for rotating terms of three years. It
was stressed at the Monday night meeting that the official Council
nominees were psychiatrists of distinction, and that there was
no personal feeling against any of them. But a start had
to be made somewhere, as a forceful reminder that the APA was
essentially a democratic organization, and that ultimate power
still reposed in its membership. Shy not hoist the colors
of the Young Turks' revolt by nominating an opposition
Council slate from the floor? The idea was approved, and
Drs. Kenneth E. Appel, William C. Menninger, and Thomas A.C.
Rennie were named as the GAP-endorsed candidates for the Council.
They were elected. (It is worthy of note that the three
defeated Council candidates subsequently became members of GAP.)
It was an
auspicious beginning for GAP, a dramatic moment. A small,
determined band of dedicated men and women, sharing a common
desire to help prepare their profession for a more active role
in meeting the manifold problems of postwar mental health, had
demonstrated simply but effectively that organized psychiatry
was responsive to democratic action. It now remained to
prove that it could move forward to a real leadership position
when the will was not wanting.
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