Two Surveys: An Introduction

The surveys in this Psychoanalytic Education Section explore two serious problems facing analytic educators, candidates, and potential candidates. The first addresses a tension between the apparently robust interest in psychoanalytic knowledge among psychiatric residents in parts of the U.S. and their declining recruitment to psychoanalytic training. The second addresses the perception of potential difficulties facing candidates in the training experience at the British Psychoanalytical Society. While conducted in seemingly disparate contexts, these surveys allow us to better assess significant obstacles to the dissemination of analytic knowledge and skill.

In “Can Psychiatry Residents Be Attracted to Analytic Training? A Survey of Five Residency Programs,” Debra Katz and Marcia Kaplan set the context for their study with an incisive overview of current recruitment and practice problems in the field. They then present an anonymous survey of five psychiatric residency programs (in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky) designed to assess residents' exposure to psychoanalytic knowledge and their interest in it, particularly with regard to career planning. With 42% of residents responding, they found a very strong interest in psychodynamic thinking and psychodynamic psychotherapy, limited exposure to working psychoanalysts, little confidence in the psychodynamic clinical skills acquired in their residency, and modest interest in analytic training (time and cost were cited as major barriers). Several important questions are raised by this survey: Has psychiatry lost interest in psychodynamic and psychoanalytic ideas and practice? What do residents who receive limited exposure to these ideas base their apparent enthusiasm on? What do they know, and how do they learn it? Are cost and time “real” or major barriers to a career interest in analysis? More studies such as this one may energize our educators into creative action.

In “Between Paranoia and Creativity: Candidates' Experience