Training for Psycho-Analysis1

At the 20th International Congress of Psycho-Analysis held in Paris in 1957, one of the present writers, in an opening address to the first scientific meeting, deplored the fact that in spite of the expansion of the work of psycho-analysis and the ever-increasing number of psycho-analysts in the world, no Congress had as yet been devoted to the technical training for psycho-analysis. We were therefore pleased to have this question raised at São Paulo and happy to be given the opportunity to present a paper.

In Freud's An Autobiographical Study he writes: 'For more than ten years after my separation from Breuer I had no followers. I was completely isolated. In Vienna I was shunned; abroad no notice was taken of me. My Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, was scarcely reviewed in the technical journals.' Only half a century later, we find all over the world Institutes of Psycho-Analysis teaching future analysts the theory and the art of psycho-analysis. The rapid extension of this teaching forces us to examine conscientiously the aims of our training Institutes, and the means by which they are achieved.

Teaching the technique is without doubt one of the main objectives of our didactic work, but it is certainly not the only one, since it also allows specialized research workers in the human sciences to acquire a concrete knowledge of the results of psycho-analytic research. The question of the requisite conditions for being initiated into the art and practice of psycho-analysis has in any case been under discussion since the days of Freud himself. The most important means of transmitting our experience to our students, however, is the training analysis. Most of the attacks directed at us from outside are concerned with this question, yet it is one point on which everyone is in agreement. Nevertheless numerous fallacious arguments have been used both for and against it.

While it is true that one can only acquire an understanding of the experience of bein