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THE QUESTION OF WHAT COMPRISES PSYCHOANALYTIC training—how to best teach a candidate how to become an analyst—has had a long and checkered history. Much has been written over the last seventy years. It is apparent that major shifts have occurred in the definition of supervision, the model for learning in supervision, the use of the analytic versus the didactic teaching method between student and supervisor, and how the supervisor uses himself with his student. These issues remain central and unresolved. I believe they reflect current changes in our understanding of how the analyst can best use himself with his patient. Concepts such as Langs's bi-personal field (1976) and Sullivan's participant-observation (1954) come to mind.
Perhaps a brief overview of the history of supervision is in order. Before psychoanalytic training was formalized, the model was that of master-apprentice. "In the early days, small groups that gathered around Freud analyzed, taught and supervised each other." (Gustin 1958, p. 63) One's personal analysis was seen as the foundation of the future analyst's training (Eckstein and Wallerstein 1958).
In 1922, formal standards were set, along with course work and one's own psychoanalysis, by the International Psycho-Analytic Society which called for the treatment of several patients under supervision (Eckstein and Wallerstein 1958).
In the 1930's there was considerable debate as to how supervision could best be accomplished. One group, from Budapest, believed that supervision—called "control analysis"—was a continuation of the candidate's personal analysis and therefore both should be done by the same analyst. The emphasis would fall on transference