Notes on Didactic Seminars and Infantalization in the Candidate/Institute Relationship: Paper invited by Dr. Kirsner for the International Journal of Controversial Discussions

To what extent do psychoanalytic training institutes, with their formalized procedures for graduation, actually promote the spirit and discipline

of psychoanalytic praxis? Or to some extent do they, perhaps, suffocate it, in ways that might seem slight but are pernicious? I have examined this general question previously (i.e., in Chapter Three of my 2019 Beyond Psychotherapy; see also Barratt, 2013, 2016). In these supplementary notes, I will neither discuss why the education of psychoanalytic trainees requires a full course of personal psychoanalytic treatment as well as the supervision of training cases in psychoanalysis, nor examine the perils of such experiences. Here “perils” refers to any procedure whereby the transmission of psychoanalytic skills runs against the spirit of the discipline itself. That is, for example, authoritarian training experiences that precipitate specious or uncritically assimilated identifications (identity formation, compliance and conformism, imitative production of “graduate analysts,” and so forth).

Rather, these somewhat polemical notes will amplify some of my previous remarks, focusing on the questions surrounding the didactic curriculum mandated by most, if not all, training institutes. Here it might be recalled that such a curriculum is the third component of the predominant “Eitingon Model” of training (see Eitingon's reports in the Internationale Zeischrift für Psychoanalyse), that it was only added to the basic components (personal psychoanalysis and supervised cases) decades later, and that its pros and cons have never been given much attention in the literature on psychoanalytic education. The critical issues and observations addressed here are based on my own training and teaching experiences from the 1980s until today in three institutes, all recognized by the International Psychoanalytic Association, as well as innumerable discussions about training procedures that I have had with trainees and teachers in psychoanalysis from across four continents.

In relation to this didactic component of training—usually delivered as a series of seminars—my general impression is that institutes recklessly disregard the profoundly significant distinction between pedagogy and andragogy. The idea of andragogy, inspired by Kapp (1833) and developed most conspicuously by Knowles (1980), seems unequivocally important for a discipline such as psychoanalysis. Pedagogy is a matter of leading children. Andragogy is a matter of allowing adults to lead; adults who are already seasoned learners in life itself. Thus an andragogic education in psychoanalysis would involve the cultivation of processes by which students—who are already sophisticated, even if not

yet specifically wellversed and critical consumers of psychoanalytic literatures—are facilitated in leading themselves onto the path of becoming psychoanalysts. Across all fields, a central feature of andragogic education is the way in which learners come to question the assumptions on which they themselves (and their “teachers”) operate. Surely this feature is especially pertinent because, whatever else the discipline of “psychoanalysis” might be held to be, it should exactly be such a process of calling matters, including oneself, into question. In this context, it should be questioned whether there is really any place in psychoanalysis for received wisdom that supposedly has to be pedagogically transmitted.

I doubt that anyone, whose claim to being or becoming a psychoanalyst is valid, doubts that this educational journey requires the discipline of reading—both as a trainee and on an ongoing basis throughout one's career as a graduate practitioner. But to what extent does, or does not, an authorized and mandated curriculum of official seminars succeed in cultivating this dimension of training? That is, cultivation of the trainee's capacity for and commitment to being an openminded, freethinking and critical consumer of the diverse literatures in psychoanalysis. A curriculum may be necessary (although it might be useful to examine this assumption), but there are surely serious questions about how it is to be designed, delivered, and assimilated—moreover, in relation to each of these three aspects, there are dangers of lapsing into infantile and infantilizing modes of functioning.

In relation to design: It seems that Anna Freud, when asked what of the psychoanalytic literature a trainee should be required to read, replied “all of it”—I was told this by someone who trained with her, but have not found this opinion directly expressed in her published writings, so it stands as legend. However, if indeed she asserted this opinion, it was over five decades ago and, although her recommendation is to be respected for its seriousness of purpose, today it lacks feasibility. Even if candidates were able to devote themselves to such a massive task as reviewing the entire contents of over fifty scientific, clinical and professional journals along with thousands of books (not to mention the fact that our literature is published in four major languages and a few less known ones), it is highly questionable whether such herculean devotion would be advisable, or even well rewarded in terms of either intellectual accomplishment or personal growth. There is, after all, a significant

proportion of psychoanalytic publication that may fairly be judged as more or less irrelevant, sometimes almost banal (occasionally even loopy or imbecilic).

So it seems essential that training institutes design some sort of a curriculum on behalf of the candidate. In terms of design issues, it would, of course, be ideal if those responsible: (i) Started their task from a carefully thoughtthrough and explicitly formulated consideration of what they consider the essential and defining coordinates of psychoanalysis as a discipline, both theoretically and clinically; (ii) Proceeded with their task by making a clear distinction between the andragogic principle of facilitating the student to become an openminded, thoughtful and discriminating reader of psychoanalytic ideas—versus the socalled “banking model” of “education” that seeks merely to make the student ingest new information and hone new skills; and (iii) Refined their task to address the individual needs of each student, rather than producing a lockstep, standardized curriculum that is aimed at some fantasized amalgam of trainees as a cohort—that is, to take into account that individuals come into training with different backgrounds, abilities and capacities.

In relation to these issues of curriculum design, training institutes can readily slip into a mode of functioning that is frankly “infantile”—one which I would parody as the attitude “this is my sandbox and I will decide, on whatever grounds I choose, who's in and who's out!” Curricula are developed from the standpoint of replicating and—maybe—improving what was done previously, rather than accepting the responsibility of this development as an opportunity to review the most significant coordinates of psychoanalysis as a discipline. Psychoanalysis is—I would argue—a unique discipline that needs, to some extent, to be rethought, refound and perhaps reformed with each generation (which is not to imply that one should abstain from reading it in terms of its peculiar history and in each specific cultural context). Yet often enough the institute's curriculum and the faculty implementation of it communicate, implicitly or explicitly, a discouraging attitude toward untrammeled exploration. Consider seminar instructors who say “reading Freud in too much detail makes you meshugah,” or “Kleinianism has become so complex and esoteric, you don't need to bother,” or “Bion is too difficult,” or “the self is not a psychoanalytic concept and the whole popularizing impetus since Sullivan simply takes one out of psychoanalysis altogether” and the

several who have said “forget Lacan and the postLacanians” (all these are exact quotations, heard by me or reliably reported to me). Whether or not one personally tends to agree with any of these sentiments is irrelevant, the attitude they communicate to trainees does not seem in the spirit of the discipline. As an aside, we can always blame Sigmund Freud as the one who initiated such ideological restrictions because it is recorded that, for example, he barred his followers from attending Alfred Adler's seminars—with the exception of Lou AndreasSalomé (1912, 1913, 1951).

The “banking model” is often evident, whether overtly or covertly. The curriculum promulgated by many training institutes frequently seems to favor the notion of education as a digestion of information and the acquisition of technical skills, rather than the facilitation and cultivation of an openminded, suspicious yet respectful, approach to the exploration of psychic life. Additionally, there is frequently both confusion and disconnection between the theoretical and clinical orientations.

For example, with regard to the understanding of theories, some institutes maintain that the candidate needs to study the distinctions between Freud's 1900 topography and his 1923 structuralfunctional model, but can omit or skim through the 1920 essay, Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Some decide that the distinctions and relations between paranoidschizoid and depressivereparative states need to be articulated in detail, but that the concepts of a “psychic retreat” or of “marsupial space” might be optional. Some make central the notion of “transitionality” to their theoretical training. Some seem only to study the notion of “selfobjects.” Some are endlessly focused on the development of “self subsystems.” And so forth. Perhaps all these ideas are worthy, but they are, after all, only ideas. All too rarely is the relationship between such high theorizing and the experience of being with a patient in psychoanalysis conveyed all that clearly and, when it is, what is inherently communicated is that psychoanalytic practice involves the application of a theoretical framework to the experiential “data” of the clinical situation. The implicit—profoundly questionable—assumption is that psychoanalysis is a procedure of “formulate and then treat” with interpretations or other appropriate interventions. As I have argued elsewhere, this characterization of psychoanalytic treatment is highly debatable, but in actuality it is rarely examined within the context of institutional curricula (cf, Barratt, 2016, 2019, in press).

With regard to the understanding of clinical skills, this same issue arises yet more conspicuously. “Technique” is taught without much consideration, if any, of the question whether psychoanalysis is actually a technical practice. This frequently entails candidates being instructed in skills that are treated as a meanstoanends. This makes the discipline epistemologically and ontologically equivalent to that of other technical trades. The electrician knows something about electrical currents and learns how to wire a socket; the chef knows something about the muscular tissue of crustaceans and learns how to prepare shrimp étouffée; and so on. Arguably, there is something profoundly wrong with these analogies. Should not the possibility be considered that psychoanalysis involves less the epistemology and ontology of technique (as in the German technik, referring to the procedures required for material production), but rather more the processes of method and praxis? It can be demonstrated that psychoanalytic processes are principally “ontoethical” and not epistemological or ontological in the conventional senses of these terms (cf, Barratt, 2013, 2016, 2019, in press; Grosz, 2017).

In relation to the delivery of a curriculum: It would, of course, be ideal if those responsible: (i) Considered as fully as possible the varying backgrounds, abilities and capacities of trainees; (ii) Relinquished the assumption that trainees should undergo their educational journey as a cohort (that is, a generational group of individuals who matriculated concurrently); and (iii) Dispensed with the paradigm of the teacher and the taught, in which it is assumed that the former has the authority of greater knowledge in terms of information about the field.

In terms of backgrounds, abilities and capacities, it is thanks to Freud (1926), as well as some prolonged political altercations about guild issues, that we are passed the point where medical training can be considered a necessary—or even preferable—preparation for candidacy in psychoanalysis. However, it has yet to be considered what the disadvantages (whatever the advantages) might be of prior training in clinical psychology. Most clinical psychology is, after all, quite medicalized in its orientation, by which I mean oriented to diagnosis on the basis of objectivistic criteria, followed by treatment that is fundamentally manipulative (and it may be noted that Freud was never greatly impressed with the disciplinary accomplishments of psychology). Psychoanalytic institutes often acknowledge that candidates with a prior education in

nonclinical disciplines require additional support as they move into a clinical field. But rarely, if ever, is it considered that trainees with a medical background often need additional support in order to relinquish what I am calling their medicalized orientation to the relationship between the practitioner and the patient (the objectivistic attitude of “formulate and then treat”), let alone to encourage them in their explorations of the disciplines that Freud considered a sound preparation for psychoanalytic training (he listed the value of knowledge in the history of civilization, mythology, the psychology of religion, and the ‘science of literature’).

Trainees matriculate with different abilities and capacities, and this too is rarely considered when institutes generate a curriculum that is basically lockstep. For example, some arrive in training with an exceptional knowledge of child development, some with none. Surely, in the best of all possible worlds, curricula should be individualized and, in a world that is ineluctably suboptimal, there should at least be some effort to gear the curriculum's design to the needs of each trainee. After all, it is frequently proclaimed that psychoanalytic training is an individual journey of education and personal growth, so why would the course of learning that is anticipated not be fashioned accordingly? If the curriculum is not thus strategized, the proclamation risks devolving into an empty platitude.

This brings us to the problematic effects of the pervasive tendency of those responsible in a training institute—those who are responsible for the design and delivery of the curriculum—prioritizing the cohort over the individual. In a conspicuous example of this, a candidate taking a leave of absence from seminars due to her pregnancy was urged by senior members of the institute to accelerate (i.e., take shortcuts with) her reading in order to “keep up with the group.” I have often heard remarks such as “by the end of Year One of seminars, a candidate should…” or “in Year Three of training, candidates have to…” But by what criteria do such verbs come into an institute's thinking about psychoanalytic training? In pedagogy, we all were as children assigned to a “class” and there were modal expectations as to what should be accomplished within the course of our participation in that grade. But that is pedagogy and would seem to be emphatically inappropriate for training in psychoanalysis.

In discriminating andragogic from pedagogic education, it is of central

importance to confront the question, Who is the teacher and who is the taught? There may be some justification for such a distinction in relation to clinical learning—that is, there are psychoanalysts with greater experience in this way of healing, who may descriptively transmit that experience to the benefit of trainees. However, beyond this sort of authority, the assumptions underlying the pedagogic faculty/student relationship have little or no validity in the context of psychoanalytic education. Indeed, there may be strong reasons to discard this structure. On the one side of this argument, one may call into question the supposition that, for the candidate to benefit optimally from reading the theoretical literature, there needs to the appearance of an authority who can direct this reading. That is, there needs to be a teacher who—to give just a single example—knows how to read Freud's 1898 paper on the “Psychical Mechanism of Forgetfulness” better than the trainee who may well be encountering the essay for the first time. This “better than” presumes that there is some sort of a “correct” reading of publications that are defined as canonical—a presumption that seems perilous. On another side of this argument against the authority of designated faculty, one can easily imagine that it is far more rewarding for a neophyte to struggle with reading recommended texts than to be, blatantly or subtly, told what meanings are to be extracted from them.

Psychoanalysis is a discipline of questioning and uncertainty. As we all are aware, one consequence of this is that there are—or should be—feelings of humility and even terror in assuming the position of being and becoming a psychoanalyst (Barratt, 2019). A further consequence is that, in a sort of reactionformation, there is often an exorbitant preoccupation with hierarchy and authority on the part of institute faculty. An extreme example of this was an institute that was privileged to have a candidate who was extraordinarily well-versed in Winnicott's writings. However, there were no faculty members competent and inclined to teach in this area. The obvious solution—that is, to invite the candidate to facilitate a seminar on this topic for her or his fellow trainees—was disregarded. Thus, no Winnicottian literature appeared in the curriculum and presumably the institute preserved the sense of its faculty being the ones in authority.

My suggestion here is that the authoritarian tradition of faculty/trainees is spurious, perhaps frequently pernicious, and that institutes could well

consider its abolition, at least in relation to the curriculum of theoretical reading. Surely, as far as is possible, selfdetermination should be the watchword of psychoanalytic education?

This is not to imply that candidates should not receive the benefit of feedback—frankly, directly, candidly and confidentially—when neurotic or characterological features are observed that might interfere with their maturation as psychoanalysts. Clearly, this is a benign function, important for each candidate's development, and it is primarily implemented in the supervision process. Yet such obstructive features are often evident in the course of seminar participation and candidates should surely have the benefit of such feedback—assuming that it can be conveyed in an authentically psychoanalytic spirit. If the right atmosphere is cultivated within an institute, there is no reason why—in addition to faculty—candidates cannot offer each other such feedback in a manner that is supportive and egalitarian. Indeed, peer feedback often avoids the problems inherent in the receipt of feedback from an alleged authority. This is a potentially facilitative function at which—perhaps paradoxically—designated faculty often fail, despite their insistence on being figures of authority with the power to move the candidate toward graduation (and also to retard or halt this momentum). We can only speculate why there might be a certain reticence or negligence toward this function, yet it is decidedly to the disadvantage of candidates if they remain unaware of perceived obstructions to their psychoanalytic development.

In suggesting potential advantages to the abrogation of facultyled seminars (at least on theoretical topics), please note that I am not disputing that there are indeed some exceptional psychoanalytic faculty who manage, in what perhaps might be depicted in terms of the educative successes of the “ignorant schoolmaster” (Rancière, 1987), to avoid the pitfalls of authoritarianism. I have known several (and have great appreciation for them). Such a “schoolmaster” is one who refrains from the infantilizing perils of posing as “the one who knows better”—rather she or he becomes the “one who facilitates thinking” that is openminded, free thinking and critical. However, I have yet to find a psychoanalytic institute that pays much significant attention to its philosophy and praxis of education—that is, to considering extensively and intensively the issue of how and why seminar “instructors” actually “teach.” In these circumstances, this is surely a fundamental issue that needs general discussion within the ranks of every training institute.

I am also not disputing that shared reading experiences can be far more powerful than those engaged entirely alone. However, this is definitely not a decisive argument in favor of the institution of designated faculty charged with leading didactic seminars for trainees. What if groups of candidates were to form themselves as temporary associations gathered for the purpose of studying a particular text or set of texts? That is, maybe with the egalitarian participation of a graduate psychoanalyst (who functions as a fellow student), but very likely without. I have known of such peer groups that have functioned with extraordinary success. Such associations of trainees might greatly enrich learning by creating a democratic and communitarian context in which psychoanalytic ideas could be wrestled with, assessed discriminatively, and assimilated discerningly.

In relation to assimilation: It is unsurprising that the infantilizing character of an institute's design and delivery of a psychoanalytic curriculum is frequently matched by infantilized attitudes and enactments on the part of its candidates. This is a complex issue for which responsibility is to be attributed neither entirely to institutes nor entirely to their candidates. But again it is an issue that urgently needs greater discussion within each educational setting. By definition and by mandate, psychoanalytic candidates are immersed in their own personal treatment. In their psychoanalysis, it is to be expected that regressive forces will surface powerfully. But it is also expected—hoped—that candidates will restrict the expression or performance of such forces to their surfacing within the psychoanalytic setting.

This is an inordinately exacting expectation. When it is not met, three consequences often arise: (i) Candidates become befuddled about the pivotal and principal importance of personal growth in training; (ii) Their training becomes further compromised by the consequent adoption of a “check the box” attitude toward the requirements for graduation; and (iii) Cohorts of trainees develop a “them and us” attitude towards the training institute's faculty.

Psychoanalytic institutes have admission standards, training requirements (which almost invariably include participation in a curriculum of prescribed seminars—a prescription that I am calling into question in several ways), and graduation criteria. While candidates may begin

their training clearly understanding, at least consciously, that this is an individualized journey of personal development toward being, becoming, and thinking as psychoanalysts, this understanding can easily become derailed. The structure of those requirements, other than that of personal treatment (i.e., supervision and didactic seminars), often seems as if intended to thwart the sustenance of an atmosphere in which personal growth takes priority over all other dimensions of the training. As is prevalently acknowledged, the processes of supervision have distinctive perils in this regard and these have been discussed quite extensively in the literature on training. However, the design and delivery of didactic seminars often stimulates specific problems such as I have discussed. In response to attitudes of authoritarianism and infantalization, candidates can all too easily come to regard supervision and seminar participation in ways that distract them from the challenges of personal growth—rather than experiencing such participation as opportunities for the stimulation for further personal development.

The labor of fulfilling requirements in the manner they are commonly designed and delivered then instigates a “check the box” approach by candidates toward their own education. This is, perhaps, the most conspicuously evident and deleterious aspect of institutional authoritarianism and infantalization. Yet it seems to persist. Perhaps, in an effort to circumvent such consequences, it would even be better to abolish the benchmark of graduation. But this was, as is well known, one aspect of Lacan's intent in 1964 when he initiated the procedure of selfgraduation (la passe), subverting the conventional authority of the institutional “Training Committee” (and the authority of “Training Analysts” to determine who is a psychoanalyst and who is not). As is also well known, many feel there are sound reasons for skepticism in relation to the claim that such a procedure resolves the problem of authoritarianism. Frequently, it has simply seemed to replace it with a different problem, namely that of unbridled narcissism and selfaggrandisement (or the reverse, in the occasional case of candidates who are so mired in the idealization of their “Training Analysts” that they fail ever to see themselves as worthy of graduation).

Finally, the argument that group identification is important to the journey of growth involved in psychoanalytic training seems notably weak. Yet, many institutes actively encourage the collective identity of candidates

as a cohort (despite the insights offered by Freud in 1921). Seminars are often closed except to members of a particular cohort; sometimes social events are arranged for a cohort; and so on. Yet is group identification really conducive to supporting the individualized journey of which training in psychoanalysis consists? I would argue quite the reverse. Indeed, given the difficulties that have been noted here, the formation of generational cohorts of candidates tends to fuel and channelize the resentment of candidates both toward the institute's structures and toward the collectivity of its faculty. These occur in several ways, all of which indubitably seem unproductive. Group identities, attachments and loyalties—whether of the faculty as a group, the candidates as a group, or a particular cohort of the latter—always entail processes of “othering” that are unfavorable toward the blossoming of psychoanalysis, its discipline and its spirit.

There is a common assumption, applicable to almost all fields of endeavor, that the history of disciplines—and indeed of humanity itself—is inherently progressive. In terms of technological success this may indeed be the case. But as several contemporary philosophers have argued, there is little reason to believe that it necessarily applies overall to ethical, political and moral affairs. Psychoanalysis has, since its inception, both offered a profound critique of the human condition and opened new pathways toward healing. This does not mean that, as a discipline and in its spirit, matters are steadily improving—perhaps on the contrary. This is why there have been several concerned critiques of institute training in psychoanalysis, with the papers by Michael Balint and Otto Kernberg (2000) having been particularly influential in this respect. With these notes, I am respectfully suggesting that the future of psychoanalysis is in danger, especially if the drift toward its institutes becoming all too similar to “trade schools” is not halted, and indeed reversed.