The Training Analyst as an Educator

For many years there has been a certain pessimistic attitude among analysts about the education of analysts. This has been especially true with reference to the training analysis. David Kairys (1964) comments on the dearth of literature on training analysis. He attributes this partly to the feeling that “the problems of analyzing within a training program are intrinsically insoluble and no longer worth discussing” (p. 485). Many other analytic educators today, however, are more optimistic, perhaps braver, perhaps more stubborn, perhaps more ready to accept the challenge of these seemingly insoluble problems. The First Conference on Training Analysis held in Pittsburgh in 1965 (see Babcock, 1965) and the Pre-Congress Conference on Training Analysis in 1965 are evidence that efforts are being made in this direction.

The Pittsburgh Conference was a unique event; it was an experiment in trying to define the educational role of a training analyst and the complications which confront us in trying to carry it out. That conference was organized to encourage free and open discussion of clinical data in order to learn from actual experiences what the problems are. We did not know if this could be done profitably. Nevertheless, we tried and came away stimulated by new perspectives.

Over the last thirty years, the struggles within and between our institutes have been based to a large extent on the proprietary power vested in “the right to train.” This kind of strife indicates some basic trouble in our educational household. It emphasizes not just the importance of these so-called insoluble problems but the necessity to keep on discussing them. In this endeavor lies the preservation of what is good from the past and the nurturing of the spirit of inquiry with which Freud began his studies. Both the old and the new are vital to the future of psychoanalysis. Our profession has seen too often the unhappy effects of attempts to take one position and discount the other. The battles ove