Termination of the Training Analysis Within the Framework of Present-Day Institutes

In a recent survey "On Current Trends in Psychoanalytic Training" (11) I recalled Freud's reference (17) to educating, healing, and governing as the three impossible professions, and suggested that the training analyst has chosen all three. For, he analyzes the students, he teaches, and he participates in decisions concerning the student's fate. The complex interweaving of these functions, which he must carry directly or indirectly, offers a seemingly "impossible" task within the context of the training analysis, particularly during the termination phase when the decision has to be made as to whether the requirement of the training analysis has been fulfilled. This requirement, which is a keystone in psychoanalytic training, has been established for about thirty years.

Even before 1922, at which time the standards were formally established, most of the early analysts underwent training analyses. While there is general acceptance today that every analyst must undergo an analytic experience of his own, widely divergent opinions exist regarding the nature of the training analysis, its timing and place in the total training, and the special technical problems it creates. As late as 1937, Freud (17) maintained that the candidate's analysis need not be carried farther than to the point where he has gained insight into the reality and effectiveness of the unconscious, and the principles of the technique applied