The Institutional Structures of Psychoanalysis and Their Effects on the Training of the Analyst

Foreword

This pioneering paper, based upon the observations of a knowledgeable and experienced clinical and educational psychoanalyst, has opened up new areas of study and consideration by psychoanalytic institutes and psychoanalytic associations and societies. The paper, though brief and not addressing the many positives involved in structured psychoanalytic education (e.g., training analysis, supervision, case conferences, theoretical courses), does call for more open discussion of issues of power, prestige, control, politics, schisms, leadership roles, and responsibilities in psychoanalytic institutes that are less than democratic in their operations. Zimmerman's call for more longitudinal studies of how psychoanalytic institutes begin, develop, and function is one that should be taken seriously.

Although he uses the analogy of the institution of marriage, the “Greed, hate, envy, jealousies, unchecked ambitions, fights for power, the flight from responsibility, infidelity” (Zimmermann, 1987, p. 343) can be observed in psychoanalytic institutions. These, too, should be examined in the quest for knowing more about ourselves. Unfortunately, the author does not pursue the question of the power of the transference. This is not always resolved at the end of a personal psychoanalysis or when formal psychoanalytic education is completed. It may, in residual form, be over-whelmingly positive or negative, and when these unrecognized persisting transferences continue to gain force, acting out may result in destructive acts. The conflict between unresolved transferences to an analyst, to an