The Difficulties of Didactic Psycho-Analysis in Relation to Therapeutic Psycho-Analysis1

It is often said and generally believed that training analysis in no way differs from therapeutic analysis. My personal experience has led me to a different conclusion.

Much could be said, in my opinion, on what it is that distinguishes them. I shall limit myself, in this short paper, to drawing your attention to the following fact, which appears to me to be of great importance: in principle we use the same technique whether it be a question of treating a patient or training a candidate, whereas the conditions governing the setting and the development of the relationship between analyst and analysand are very different in the two cases.

These special conditions will thus have serious repercussions in a training analysis on the transference and counter-transference reactions, the central point of every analysis. Resistances will therefore also be manifested in quite different ways.

Even before the analysis begins the situation of a candidate in relation to his analyst is not only different from, but I would say almost the opposite of, that of an ordinary patient, owing to the fact that:

• 1he already has a fairly extensive theoretical knowledge of psycho-analysis;

• 2he comes of his own accord to be analysed;

• 3he has been free to choose his analyst according to his inclinations, whether according to what he knows or believes he knows of his personality, or to what he knows of him directly or from his publications;

• 4the anticipated successful termination of the analysis implies that he will have in the future both a professional and a social relationship with his analyst.

Whatever the importance of these factors may be in any particular case, the result is always the same in the analytical situation, which is strained from the beginning: indeed the image that the analyst presents to the patient has lost the perfect neutrality deemed necessary in the classic technique.