An Argument in Favor of Making Training Analysis Voluntary Rather Than Mandatory

I have not attempted to review the extensive literature on training analysis. The views I express are in general agreement with those of Siegfried Bernfeld as reported in his paper presented in 1952 and published posthumously in 1962 (Bernfeld, 1962)

Before the 1920s and the 1930s—that is, before the time when psychoanalytic institutes were first organized and then proliferated—psychoanalytic training, as we know it now, did not exist. Instead of undertaking training at an accredited school, the student had the responsibility of learning analysis as best he could. Of course even with the organized training now available the student still has the problem of learning analysis. The extent to which analysis can be taught, as compared to the extent to which it must be learned, is a difficult question to decide. Although students do go through institutes, graduate, and become psychoanalysts, it is difficult to be certain how much the outcome was the result of training, how much it was unrelated to training, and how much it was in spite of training. However, there is no question that the organization of training decreased the responsibility of the student in learning.

This decrease in the student's responsibility took a particularly striking form in connection with his personal analysis. This was one method of learning that was recommended by Freud and followed by many students voluntarily. It is important to recognize that this recommendation for personal analysis, or didactic analysis as it was called then, was not defined according to its duration and that the analysis might have lasted only a