The first decade of the 20th century was significant to the growth of American neurology and psychology and their new approaches to the traditional problems being faced. There was increasing attention paid to the pathological states of a different types of patient than usually seen by state hospital alienists--patients who rarely needed hospitalization. Nonetheless, these patients did suffer from a variety of physically painful and emotionally distressing states: headaches, neuralgias, paralysis--for which no organic cause could be found--neurasthenia (the nerve weakness of the age), and the fascinating, but bewildering, variations in consciousness (from amnesia to fugue states to cases of multiple personality). Increasingly, the profession thought proper treatment of these patients' to be the use of various psychotherapies, because their complaints were essentially psychological in origin.

The American Psychopathological Association, founded on the 2nd of May 1910 at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., was a response to these trends. Its purpose was the promotion of "the study of the scientific problems of abnormal psychology." Such a study included the "abnormal mental processes" themselves, their relationship both to the organic state of body as well as to "social or cultural problems," and the various means of treatment possible for these states. This organization was planned to be a small interdisciplinary group devoted to the scientific study of psychopathology.

Its first president was Morton Prince of Boston, apparently the leader in founding the organization for those interested in both psychopathology and psychotherapeutics. Many of these men were also heavily involved in the early days of psychoanalysis and it is not an accident that the American Psychoanalytic Association was founded in Baltimore in May 1911, at the time of the second APPA meeting. For more than a decade, the two associations would be intimately intertwined. In 1919, William A. White, who had been President of the Psychoanalytic (1915-1916), moved that the Psychoanalytic be dissolved by combining it with the APPA. It was Adolf Meyer, who had been President of the APPA three times in the first decade, who lead the forces of progress when he argued that analysts could make their contributions more effectively if they continued with their own organization and thereby won the day for the psychoanalysts.

White, while president of the American Psychiatric Association (1924-1925), succeeded in bringing the Psychoanalytic to plan its annual meeting with the APA. As the analysts gained strength, there was also a growing desire by some to see the APPA expire. Symptomatic of such a wish was the proposal in 1931 for a new journal to be entitled Psychopathology: A Psychoanalytic Quarterly; we know it today, however, only by its subtitle. Subsequently, the APPA emerged from another crisis which strengthened its identity as an independent and interdisciplinary research organization ready to explore all valid avenues of understanding psychopathology. Once again, Dr. White was one of the five physicians that proposed in 1928 that the APPA become a section of the APA. Although only seven of its 109 members were non-physicians (psychologists early and sociologists later had been members), such a combination would have deprived them of their membership and participation. L. Eugene Emerson, the analytically oriented psychologist from Boston who had been a member since 1912, took the lead and narrowly defeated the motion. He then became secretary to the organization from 1930 to his death in 1939.

Meetings were held in conjunction with the American Neurological Association for the first sixteen years, then four years with the APA. After some alteration, the APPA in 1938, under the presidency of Samuel W. Hamilton, established its current trend of two-day meetings held independently. Members of the Association have always been proud of the smallness of the group, which makes open and free discussion possible. With the mental health field a rapidly growing discipline, the APPA has responded to pressures for the allowance of an increase in membership by extending its membership from an original limit of 100 to 250, as of 1969. The contents of the meetings have varied widely over the years and often reflect the state of knowledge and the enthusiasm of the field at any given stage of historical development. The initial meeting was devoted to dreams, thereby establishing a precedent for having a dominant theme. Its application was variable, however. Other early leading topics were anxiety, phobias, dementia, instincts in psychology, and sexual problems (1923). Specific topics that were the subject of papers included: epilepsy, stuttering, mental deficiency, schizophrenia, juvenile delinquency, mental hygiene and motion pictures of a child analysis (1931). Many of the early papers were published by Morton Prince in his Journal of Abnormal Psychology, which he founded in 1906. His strong support in essence made this the official journal of the APPA from 1910 to 1925, when he presented the journal to the American Psychological Association.

The organization went through a period of relative slump during the depression years of the 1930’s, but gradually the younger members brought in by Hamilton took the lead in revitalizing it. One mechanism utilized after 1943 was the adoption of a unifying theme for the annual meeting. Topics were often selected that represented the forefront of some exciting new research area in psychopathology. Paul Hoch took a leading role in planning for the annual meeting and for many years until his death was coeditor of the volume of papers that were published. Initiated in 1944, the series continues to date and receives a wide distribution and readership. In addition, Dr. Hoch planned with Dr. Henry Stratton the founding of Comprehensive Psychiatry (1960), which once again provided the APPA with its own official journal. As it approaches the end of its seventh decade, the American Psychopathological Association continues to provide a forum for the vital, scientific, and interdisciplinary studies of psychopathology. -written by Eric T. Carlson, Historian of the APPA