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Initiating Psychoanalysis is number 5 in the New Library of Psychoanalysis: Teaching Series under the general editorship of Dana Birksted-Breen. This particular volume was edited by Bernard Reith, Sven Lagerlof, Penelope Crick, Mette Moller, and Elizabeth Skale. The book is a collection of papers by authors from several countries in Europe and the United States assembled by the Working Party on Initiating Psychoanalysis of the European Psychoanalytic Federation. The Working Party currently consists of ten analysts who, together, have been studying the dynamics of first interviews since 2004. Their decision to publish papers that they had found especially useful in this study resulted in the present volume.
The book is especially relevant to the widespread current concern about the decline of clinical psychoanalysis in our own country because it addresses the ways in which the first contact between a prospective patient and an analyst/consultant may either facilitate or discourage the beginning of an analysis. Of particular interest is Part IV, the last section, titled “Daring or Reluctance to Start an Analysis.” The penultimate paper in this section and in the entire book, by Ehrlich, begins with the following assertion:
At present in the United States we practice less analysis per analyst than ever before. The last full report from a survey conducted by the Committee on Psychoanalytic Practice of the American Psychoanalytic Association presents the following findings: the number of patients in analysis per analyst has been steadily diminishing over the past twenty-five years, at a rate of roughly one percent a year. At the time of the last survey, certified or active members who had patients in analysis saw on average three analytic cases. The reported morale or level of satisfaction of those who practiced less analysis was low in comparison to that of those practicing more analysis. (p. 330)
Readers of this journal need not rely on data gathered sixteen years ago t