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The subject of this Panel was both the incentive and opportunity for an extensive discussion in our Society. It also led to a controversial internal seminar.
The classical (and non classical) training of analysts has been very seriously criticized (1-4, 6, 7) and to some criticism it is difficult, if not impossible, to give satisfactory answers. With the merciless list of all the distortions and faults of training it is difficult not to fall into the clear-cut alternative between a skeptical position which nevertheless risks throwing away the baby with the bath-water on the one hand, and on the other a conservative position which reaffirms the need of the institution, but is not able to guarantee answers that are not in some way contradictory. In our case, we shifted from one extreme to the other, remaining divided (not so much as groups but intimately, among ourselves) between heterogeneous and unreconcilable convictions: the need, that is, to guarantee a basic preparation and a continuity of knowledge, and the conviction that this transmission is not without distortions and betrayals. I must say that this split reflects the phrasing of the title of this Round Table; it speaks of the training of psychoanalysts and therefore of training related to the unconscious. On the other hand, though, it uses the word “implicit”, hidden and not “unconscious” objectives, of the training. The title itself reflects a semantic break between two linguistic universes which describe worlds that are perhaps parallel but not unifiable; for example, Sartre's notion of “bad faith” (8) is not unifiable with Freud's notion of ‘unconscious’. In other words, speaking of hidden objectives thus shows things in a different light. This has struck us because, as Piaget would say, it has “decentered” our perspective, forcing us to consider the linguistic aspects of the problem. We realized, in particular, that the insoluble difficulties of training result from the power that the metaphor of “family