Critical Thoughts on Choosing Training Analysts

My friend George Awad, a Palestinian analyst residing in Toronto, died of heart failure on May 24, 2007. We had two common topics. One was the tragic Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which we were to discuss at the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) congress in Berlin — where George's paper had to be read posthumously. The other was the need for changes in analytic training. A few months before his death, George — who was a Training Analyst of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Institute — sent me a draft of a paper he planned to write. I was proud to discover that it was to some extent inspired by our long discussions during a conference on terrorism in Milan, in 2006. He never completed the paper. I edited George's draft, and submit the paper to commemorate George Awad, a wise and courageous man.

Emanuel Berman

As a result of my experience as chair of the Committee on Institute Membership in Toronto, I came to conclude that the method of choosing Training Analysts that I have always supported has political aspects, and may function as a way to preserve the “purity” of psychoanalysis and to prevent “controversial” members from becoming Training Analysts. I also realized that it took me long to reach this conclusion because I am a “good boy” who played by the rules, and because my theoretical beliefs and clinical practice were within the mainstream. To me this was a personal choice; I think of myself as a Modern Freudian/Object Relations theory advocate, or what Ellman would call “Freudian Self and Object” psychoanalyst. Furthermore, I started teaching at our institute 2-3 years after finishing my training. I teach quite a bit, and in fact have been turning down more teaching opportunities. Thus, I have never felt excluded from the teaching or other activities of our Institute or Society.

However, as a result of my direct involvement in the system of choosing Training Analysts, I realized that more “controversial” anal