The Psycho-Analytic Vocation and the Implications of the Training Analyst's Countertransference on Selection of Candidates

"Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum"—Horatious, Epistolae, Lib. I-XVII. V-36 ("It is not allowed to all men to reach Corinth")

The selection of the candidates who apply for psychoanalytic training at the Institute in Milan allowed us to make some observations which are briefly outlined in this paper.

One group of these candidates considered the training, which was for them a concrete expression of their ego-ideal, a means to achieve professional qualification. For these candidates the function of therapy of macro- and micro-pathological structures appeared to take second place.

The opposite occurred in a second group of candidates who recognized in the training analysis an eminently therapeutic function for their own psychopathological disturbances, and professional qualification was of secondary importance in this group.

In evaluating these two different approaches, the request for professional qualification is considered less favourable for selection than the request for therapeutic analysis. Gitelson's paper on this subject, when he considered the problem of the "normal" candidate, is most useful.

The purpose of our paper is to analyse this problem from two points of view: one of us (Tolentino in Section I) has considered the problem of selecting candidates starting from some general considerations and above all from the problem of the countertransference; the other (Zapparoli in Section II) has considered the specific problem of psychoanalytic vocation.

The analysis of the candidates must not deviate from any of the principles that we follow in the practice of individual psychoanalysis, and in this sense it is desirable that we adopt without reserve, the system that the training analyst does not interfere with the curriculum of the candidate and avoids making any administrative decisions.

The discussion of the objectives that we aim at in selection, that is to prod