On Becoming an Analyst: Introduction

This conference report is unusual in that it describes a conference written and presented by psychoanalytic candidates. To read personal accounts from candidates of their training is rare in the psychoanalytic literature and a first for our journal. Initially, the essays presented in this report were not intended for publication. Rather, they constituted presentations given at a scientific meeting of the Quebec English Branch of the Canadian Society in May 2008. It is a tradition in the branch that the senior candidates of the branch institute are given the opportunity to present at a scientific meeting of the branch at the end of their fourth and final year of seminars.

In the past the candidates' evening at the QE Branch has followed rather conventional lines, with either the training analysts involved as members of a panel, shared with the candidates, or discussions by the candidate group of some aspects of psychoanalytic theory or technique. Those of us in the audience on this occasion expected something similar. Instead we were treated to something quite different. In very personal ways the candidates spoke movingly of their experiences in analytic training, of their individual experiences in becoming psychoanalysts. The audience was at first taken aback at the personal, revealing tone of the presentations. Soon, the enthusiasm in the room mounted. We were hearing of the pleasures and the pains of becoming analysts in language that those of us in the older generation would hardly have thought about or dared to use at a scientific meeting of our society.

All of them talked of their training experiences in words that mixed the personal and the psychoanalytic. Their presentations were individual yet also informed us of the struggles of their class to form a coherent, working group. This dimension of institute life tends to be neglected in studies of