The Educational Prerequisites for Analytic Training

For the past five years, the Committee on Prerequisites for Training has been studying the question of the influence of prior educational experiences upon the readiness of a candidate to comprehend and utilize his psychoanalytic training. We have found it useful to distinguish between the specific personal qualities used as criteria for selection of candidates and the more general qualifications of educational and experiential background which serve as criteria for eligibility to apply for training. We have thought of the latter as a kind of coarse filter which delivers a relatively small pool of people who can then go through the fine filter of the selection process of our Institutes. The criteria used for this latter process have been continuously studied and discussed since the beginning of organized psychoanalytic training. While recognizing the impossibility of precise, easy-to-apply rules, most people would agree on the usefulness of evaluating such general characteristics as analyzability, the motivation to be an analyst, and the prior demonstration of competence, accomplishment, and perseverance. Some more specific qualities, harder to assess, include a motivation to understand psychological processes in oneself and others. This may be manifest by qualities such as the capacities for empathy and introspection; avoidance of closure and tolerance for ambiguity; a sense of ordering things along with the ability to listen without immediate need for objectification. To these can be added the “physicianly attitude” of empathic objectivity, dedication, dependability, and responsibility, and respect for the patient's personal