Discussion

Kelman's paper is of particular interest to me as I am presently engaged in an intensive study of training and supervisory analysis. Psychoanalytic education is a matter of great topical significance which Dr. Kelman has treated with perspective and wisdom.

Dr. Kelman begins by tracing training analysis from its origin to its present concept and practice. He comments on the demise of the purely didactic training analysis, and makes a plea for transcending the conflicting principles involved in psychoanalytic education as compared with psychoanalytic treatment. According to Dr. Kelman, the first step toward such a rapprochement must be a careful consideration of the evolution of the entire field of psychoanalysis.

It has been my impression that many psychoanalysts have been caught in the network of “psycho-politics,” of “psychoanalytic unionism” and of sterile conformity which has either taken the form of compliance or defiance. The analytic vanguard of militant “brave new worlder's” has given way to providers and seekers of emotional hammocks, stultified in the spirit of freer investigation and experimentation. A conflict has also arisen in that modern training analysis has aimed at providing greater independence, stressing the evolution of individual style for each candidate, while paying increasing attention to personality kinks which interfere with the analyst's therapeutic function. By contrast there is the risk of indoctrination, over-education, over-treatment, and potential infantilization of the psychoanalytic candidate. Dr. Kelman is acutely aware of the syncretism, and I need not elaborate on it further. However, I wish to make some particular comments which stress a somewhat different point of view.

I have been examining the concept of the training analyst by means of the conceptual tool of the social role. The focal interest regarding role definition lies in the clarification of what the training analyst and trainee expect of each other in terms of a mutuall