Special Problems in Connection with Termination of Training Analyses

I would like to start with two quotations from Freud to Ferenczi in the Fall of 1909, recently reported by Balint (2). They are probably some of the earliest remarks on training analysis. "Eitingon is here, goes twice weekly on a walk with me after supper and there he lets himself be analyzed, " and "Eitingon who has picked me up twice weekly for an evening walk on which he lets himself be analyzed, comes Friday for a last time and then goes to Berlin for a year." Early training analyses, according to Balint, were short and informal. When the dynamics of the unconscious and of transference were demonstrated to the trainee, his further training was left to his personal ingenuity. In a later generation of European psychoanalysts, Balint reports, there was a frequent need for additional analysis after completed official training. This was mostly carried out privately and secretly in order to spare the prestige of the analyst.

I do not want to go deeper into the history of training analysis, Balint (2) and Ekstein (4) have reported this history very aptly. They have shown that training analysis and its termination has been and is full of unsolved problems. The differences and similarities between training and therapeutic analysis have been frequently discussed. Anna Freud (6) has pointed out the similarity between training and child analysis. In child analysis modifications of classical technique were found to be unavoidable. Modifications in the technique of training analysis have been discussed by Alexander (1), Grotjahn (8), and others. Even those psychoanalysts who prefer no modifications of classical technique are fully aware that the reality situation in which training analysis takes place is different from that of a therapeutic analysis.