The Psycho-Analyst

Both the essential and the desirable qualifications for a student who wishes to become a psycho-analyst are implicit in the nature of psycho-analytical work itself. Intelligence, academic qualification, or a standard of culture the equivalent of such qualification is the initial equipment required of an applicant for training in psycho-analysis.

Freud's discoveries began with his investigation into the meaning of abnormal states of mind. He finally encompassed the whole field of man's mental and emotional development. The concepts he formulated are basic in the science of psycho-analysis, the data from which they arose being supplied not only by the abnormal but by the so-called normal including himself. He evolved a specific technique for acquiring and assessing his data. Psycho-analysis is therefore the study of man, and in such a study abnormal states of mind find their place but the 'normal' is as much the object of inquiry as the 'abnormal'.

An essential qualification for any student is therefore an insatiable curiosity concerning man's mental and emotional life.

Students gravitate to psycho-analytic study by two main routes. The objective one is taken by the scientist, doctor, sociologist, educationalist, because psycho-analytical science offers to them a possibility of further understanding the obstinate problems of human nature with which they are constantly confronted in their work.

The subjective route is taken by those who find obstinate problems within themselves for which they seek understanding and solution.

Psycho-analytical research and practice needs students arriving by both paths.

Another essential qualification for the would-be psycho-analyst is implicit in the foregoing considerations. The scientific observer accustomed already to collecting and scrutinising data from external objects, must, if he would understand human nature include himself as an object of inquiry. He may intellectually accept the concepts of psycho-analysis but there can be