Special Problems in Connection with Termination of Training Analyses1

Therese Benedek presented the opening paper of the panel. She described the development of training from a rather short apprenticeship to an increasingly complex process. She doubted whether the growing length of training analyses achieved the desired goal and joined in the warnings of Balint and Glover against an all too dogmatic and hierarchic training organization which could interfere with the creative scientific independence of the trainee. She pointed out that countertransference of the training analyst may be affected by the group psychology of the training system, and quoted Freud's recommendation: that training analysis has accomplished its purpose if it imparts a sincere conviction of the existence of the unconscious and a first sample of the analytic technique. Thereafter, Freud said: "We hope that the processes of Ego transformation will go on of their own accord and that the trainee will bring his new insight to bear upon all his subsequent experiences." Benedek sees us confronted today with the challenge "to guide the course of psychoanalytic training between the Scylla of superficial and inadequate personal analysis and the Charybdis of interminable training analysis in order to avoid the introjection of all too rigid scientific ideals."

Training analysis is different from therapeutic analysis in its goals. It "opens up the personality to the process of interminable analysis, which is the fate as well as the equipment of the psychoanalyst." Anna Freud has pointed out that the patient in therapeutic analysis has an unobstructed way to project his fantasies onto his analyst, while for the patient in training this projection is obstructed by the analyst's realistic significance for the future of his candidate patient. However,