Whose Analysis is it, Anyway? Commentary on Wilson

Reading Mitchell Wilson's thoughtful and challenging paper, “Putting Practice into Theory,” puts me in mind of an incident from early in my career. I had just moved back to Saint Louis, my home, from New York City, where I had trained in psychiatry. I had accepted a full-time appointment at a local medical school. I was at a reception for new faculty members and was introduced to the dean. He asked me about my academic and research interests, and I told him of my intention to pursue psychoanalytic training. He commented on the requirement for a personal training analysis, and offered this observation: “Isn't the requirement just a way for the senior guys to keep their practices full?” Before I could say, “Actually, there are good reasons for the requirement, like …,” he had moved on. I wanted to tell him about all that I had yet to learn.

Twelve years after the incident with the dean, I was in Chicago meeting with a kind, elderly training analyst from the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis who was evaluating my work as part of the training and supervising analyst appointment process for the Saint Louis Psychoanalytic Institute. He asked, “Why do you want to be a training analyst?” I could have said, “Because I am interested in psychoanalytic education and in being generative,” but I did not. I said, without hesitating, “Because I want to practice analysis.” I wondered whether I had just confirmed my former dean's cynical view of the entire training analyst enterprise. Or was I simply being realistic?

The reality of my career as a training analyst for the past seventeen years has actually been more complex. I work and have worked with candidates, to be sure, but I have also worked with many in professions and fields far removed from mental health or even health care more generally. I have also worked with a number of mental health professionals who have not wanted to pursue psychoanalytic training, yet wanted a psychoanalytic experience