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Educators generally believe that developing proficiency in psychoanalysis requires significant clinical immersion and, thus, that considerable professional development occurs in the years after graduation from analytic training. While we know that graduate analysts continue their control cases, there are no empirical data on whether or how graduates further develop their analytic skills after training (Cherry et al. 2004; Glick et al. 1996). Neither the period from graduation through training analyst appointment nor the career path for analysts who do not seek training analyst appointment has ever been systematically studied.
To explore postgraduate professional development, we have initiated a longitudinal study of analytic careers. As a prelude to this larger effort, we conducted this survey of the last fifteen years of graduates from the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research. The survey asked graduates to describe both their analytic practice and their interest in pursuing training and supervising analyst appointment.
The 23-item questionnaire was completed by 66% of respondents (67/102). Graduates practiced a mean of 30 hours per week, and 39% had a salaried job in addition to private practice. The study identified two subgroups of graduates. The first subgroup are the noncertified, nontraining analysts (GAs), 78% of respondents (52/67). The second subgroup are the certified and training analysts (CAs and TAs), 22% of respondents (15/67). The GAs began a mean of 1.4 new cases since graduation, as compared to CAs and TAs, who began a mean of 5.4 and 8.3 new cases, respectively. CAs and TAs practiced more analysis and saw more twice-weekly therapy cases than GAs did. The most commonly practiced treatment for all subgroups was at frequencies of once a week or less. This finding is consistent with membership studies done by the American Psychoanalytic Association (Brauer and Brauer 1998). Columbia graduates had the highest interest in becoming a TA