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HANS STRUPP, WHO WAS TRAINED IN PSYCHOANALYSIS at the Washington School, is known for his careful and thought provoking research on what makes for negative and positive results from psychotherapeutic endeavors (Hadley and Strupp 1976), (Strupp et al 1977). This article, from an expert is another excellent contribution. There is little with which I can disagree. So my comments will be by way of emphasis, expansion and explication.
Since the basis of Strupp's discussion is a book by Dorte von Drigalski, who describes her unsatisfactory experiences with two psychoanalysts, while a candidate at a German psychoanalytic training institute. Strupp's essay is concerned therefore, with (her) training analyses.
Training is a most unfortunate adjective to apply to psychoanalytic treatment. The aim of a psychoanalysis is to help a patient overcome personality handicaps which cause suffering and which interfere with growth and development. A "training" analysis has the additional purpose of ridding an analytic candidate of blindspots which interfere with his practicing psychoanalysis and of enabling him to use himself and his technical skills in the best possible way. It has nothing to do with training as training. It is a psychoanalytic experience, a voyage of self discovery.
So I applaud Strupp when he points out that the objective of any psychotherapy, including psychoanalysis, is
to help the patient achieve what he or she is seeking. It must alleviate pain and suffering and it must result in greater self-realization and inner strength … Conversely, a therapeutic process in which such changes are conspicuously absent is cause for concern.