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To reflect upon psychoanalytical training is to return once more to an ever-present problem. Once again we must question didactic analysis, its characteristics and purposes, the place of Psychoanalysis in society, the psychoanalysis establishment and how it relates to society, and so on. A science “invented by an autodidact” (1), which in 1910 was already pointing to the need for didactic analysis and by 1920, in Vienna and Berlin, had established the first training system, has now become a welter of institutions, theoretical models and barely-comprehensible methods. Another factor to be taken into account when considering psychoanalytical training is that Psychoanalysis is now accepted by society and is present in universities, hospitals, social security, etc. What was once a marginal profession, unrecognized by official institutions, has now attained a status wherein its specific identity is lost within the general concept of psychotherapy.
In this brief space I should like to discuss only two of the many relevant factors. Firstly, the need to maintain a degree of detachment (or “extra-terriotoriality”) (2) in psychoanalytical practice; and secondly the tendency towards enshrinement of the analytical standards. Both aspects point to the need to maintain the specific character of psychoanalytical discourse.
All psychoanalytical societies seem to share the view that didactic analysis is the key element in analytical training, or even the sole means of acquiring psychoanalytical knowledge. There is equally a consensus regarding the need to establish a framework of rules in which this analysis can proceed. When I say consensus, I refer to the authorities—Psychoanalytical Societies—which establish the rules. In his criticism of Fairbairn for eliminating the couch from the analytical standards, Etchegoyen (3) notes on this point: “We may choose our own style, but the rules of technique are set by the analytical community and cannot be altered”. It would be well if all the