Origins
The Los Angeles Institute for Psychoanalysis, the city's first psychoanalytic organization, was founded in 1946 by a group of American and European psychoanalysts and their students. Many of these men and women had already been working and studying together since the late 1920's, but after World War II, they formed an official institute, consisting of thirteen "charter members," under the auspices of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Early Years
At first, financial resources were so scarce that classes for analysts-in-training were held in a nursery school. Soon, however, as membership expanded, the Institute moved to a rented office in Beverly Hills. Two moves later, by 1976, the Los Angeles Institute was comfortably settled in its current, specially designed space on Sawtelle Boulevard in West Los Angeles, containing classrooms, an auditorium and a library.

Recent Developments
In 1967, following bureaucratic reorganization, we received our current name, the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (LAPSI). Generally speaking, the Society oversees administration, the psychoanalytic clinic, research, community outreach and continuing education, while the Institute focuses specifically on the training of future psychoanalysts. LAPSI currently numbers about 150 members and fifty members-in-training (clinical associates), from such diverse backgrounds as Medicine, Psychology, Social Work, Marriage Family & Child Counseling, Law and the Humanities.

The Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute is a member of both the American and International Psychoanalytic Associations. Locally, LAPSI joined three other psychoanalytic institutes in 1995 to form the Federation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies (FIPAS), a group devoted to furthering continuing education and professional development among psychoanalysts in Southern California.