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YOU, WHO ARE GRADUATING TODAY, cherish the belief that you have learned some of the fundamentals of psychoanalysis as a start toward becoming wise therapists. I believe this to be true. You have received as good a training as can be given at this time.
Now, I know that we all want to feel reasonably certain that our knowledge is accurate and relevant. This assurance, however, I cannot give you. You are graduating at a time of world change, at a time when the value of psychoanalysis is being questioned, and at a time when psychoanalysis is reexamining its own knowledge. This reevaluation does not ask, "Are we right or wrong?" It looks at the nature of the knowledge which has been transmitted. Certainty will not be in your grasp, but the coming period promises to be one of active creative debate, creative thinking, observation, dialogue, and clinical ingenuity in which you will be a participant. You have not learned a trade; you have learned to sharpen your minds, to observe, to listen, to question, to evaluate, to see relationships, and to work in full partnership with another human being so that he may shape his life more to his liking.
You have already begun to develop a style of your own, but you are still too close to your institution not to have adopted its lingo and its favorite formulations. A few words about the use of lingo. If you can, avoid it. It has more pitfalls than benefits. Supposedly, it exists to provide a common frame of reference, to facilitate communication. But psychoanalytic terms have a historical life of their own and mean different things to different people. Communication