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These lectures and debates of the faculty of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute are transcriptions of meetings held between 1989 and 1991 to revise the institute's educational policy, in light of shifts affecting analytic training, theory, and practice. Change occurred in the U.S. as a result of the acceptance of non-M.D's into the American Psychoanalytic Association, the relegation of psychoanalysis to one of several competing paradigms of therapy from its central position within psychiatry, and the withdrawal of the analytic community from involvement in the direction and teaching of medicine and psychiatry.
A short opening section, “The Future of Psychoanalysis,” contains essays by R. Michels and C. Brenner. Michels foresees the creation of other forms of institute governance—for example, in universities outside of medical or health settings—which will compete with the current free-standing institutes by offering alternative training models. The profession will change as those institutes most successful in attracting good candidates become the dominant ones Michels and Brenner advocate a shift in curriculum, away from more speculative theories of the mind (including Freud's), toward psychoanalysis as a method and clinical process, and theories that can be evaluated in the clinical situation. Fearing a dilution of professional standards, Brenner proposes that institutes concentrate on standardizing the analytic method, a view not shared by Michels, who feels that the danger of sterility in the field is currently far greater than the danger of “impurity.” Many other issues, like the need for marketing and research, and the relationship between psychoanalysis and other disciplines, are raised in the discussion that follows.
The second section on the pluralism of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and technique—“The' Common Ground' of Psychoanalysis”—regroups essays composed in response to R. Wallerstein's controversial paper “One Psychoanalysis or Many” (1988), whi