American Psychoanalytic Education—Historical Comments

The publication of the book, Psychoanalytic Education in the United States, has had several interesting side results. A valuable one has been to arouse the attention and thought of experienced and knowledgeable outside educators in what we are doing, and some of them have expressed their views on education and on us in writing. Among these critics, Seward Hiltner, Professor of Theology at the University of Chicago, has written an article I have been privileged to read in manuscript, which contains this flattering comment on the service to education by psychoanalysts.

The service is plainly magnificent and munificent. … Even if the motives for this service are as mixed as psychoanalysis demonstrates all human motivation to be, the conclusion is plain that of him who has more, more is expected, in other words that he exercises orders of professional responsibility which are vital to the existence of the profession at all, not even considered by the average practitioner. Psychoanalytic reluctance over claiming moral virtue ought certainly not to obscure the facts. And perhaps it would not be out of accord with psychoanalytic wisdom to suggest that inverted pride is still pride.

When we recall how often psychoanalysts have been asked to consider their evil ways and repent, it is certainly refreshing and gratifying to find a theologian, who asks us to stop and consider whether we are not repressing an unconscious sense of virtue. If Dr. Hiltner is correct, we must admit that, for all our insistent and constant need for insight, we have rarely or ever thought of the matter and have taken our service in this field for granted. The duty to educate must have been built into our archaic psychoanalytic ego very early in our history, and it would indeed be proper for us to dig it up. It seems that every psychoanalyst has in his knapsack a schoolmaster's ferule. We find him teaching not only in our own institutes but in schools of social work, in psychiatric and other uni