Psychoanalytic Training: Reaching the Promised Land?

Abstract

The current state psychoanalytic training is marked by excessive diversity, with different approaches and practices often opposed. Huge theoretical differences find common ground under the umbrella of pluralism, creating serious challenges and impediments for educators, supervisors and mentors, affecting the training enterprise and reshaping the future of psychoanalysis. Rather than joining the controversies and arguing what is right or wrong, this paper attempts to define choice-points that underpin this diversity and the consequences of the positions taken on them. The authors argue that controversy needs to be replaced by clarification of such choice-points, which may lead to greater clarity of fault lines, better defined and consolidated psychoanalytic identity, and eventually to more reasonable debate and disagreement. Additionally, the authors look at the impact of pluralism on the state of the psychoanalytic institute, the agency of psychoanalytic training, and its need for clarity in defining its primary task and accordingly the qualifications of faculty, in particular the need to revamp the training analyst system. Finally, psychoanalytic training is becoming more inclusive of social dimensions and group dynamics which is bound to greatly enrich and widen the scope of future psychoanalytic practitioners.