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It is singularly appropriate that a contribution by me on psychoanalytic education should appear in a volume dedicated to the late Joan Fleming. Practically every article I have written on this subject owes its provenance to her. Over the years, the work we did together in the American Psychoanalytic Association was directed toward understanding and improving psychoanalytic training. This goal was undoubtedly the focus of her professional life. She was an educator and teacher first and foremost. The several occasions to set down many of the thoughts that I present in the essay that follows were, as a rule, provided by Dr. Fleming, either through the Survey, C.O.P.E., the Three Institutes Program on Psychoanalytic Education, C.O.P.E.R., or the innumerable workshops in which we participated.1 Psychoanalytic education in the United States owes her a great debt of gratitude. She influenced it in a fundamental way.
The purpose of this essay is to examine some of the factors that contribute to an essential conservatism in psychoanalytic education, to a clinging to the past. I intend to explore how certain themes recur repetitively in the way analysts think about psychoanalytic education, in the philosophy of the process which they enunciate, and ultimately in the practical measures they institute to implement their approach. It is a fact, for example, that the guiding principles of the psychoanalytic curriculum do not always correspond to the neatly phrased paragraphs bravely set in the pages of the institute's brochure or catalog. A picture of the true, that is, of the really