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Our discipline is in an intense, if not unique, period of ambiguity, debate, and self-examination. In talk, in papers, in e-mail, there is concerned discussion about the relevance of psychoanalysis, about the place of psychoanalysis in the world of psychotherapies, about studying its methods and its effectiveness, about the shifting receptivity to psychoanalytic ideas and treatment in the culture at large, and, within the field, about the ongoing search for the “common ground” we share as psychoanalysts. Given these concerns, how are we to educate our candidates today?
As you will see in reading the following articles, psychoanalytic education is in need of serious self-scrutiny. It is harder to set out the goals of psychoanalytic education now than it used to be. Even the reasonable aim that students should learn the technique of clinical psychoanalysis and the theories that support it is no longer a simple and straightforward ambition. Our technique feels less “standard” than it once did, its knowledge base more ambiguous, and our supporting theories (of clinical process, of psychopathology, of mental structure and function, etc.) less monolithic, more pluralistic, and perhaps more tentative. At its best, this pluralism invites open-mindedness about theoretical utility and effectiveness. At its worst, it invites narrow-minded ideological battles.
My own experience in psychoanalytic education (as both student and teacher) has taught me to appreciate how difficult and how thrilling learning to be an analyst can be. We expect that our students will have complex new experiences of themselves and their patients—difficult—and that with our help, they will find ways to make psychoanalytic sense and use of them—thrilling. And we hope to offer our students our theories and our own analytic experience to support and guide them through the challenges of their training.
Analysts have weaknesses as well as strengths, however. We tend to be good at developing meaningful ideas abou