The Training Setting in Training Analysis: A Retrospective View of the Evaluative and Reporting Role and Other 'Hampering' Factors

There are two contrasting points of view prevalent among training analysts about the deterrent effects of the analyst's evaluative 'reality' role. Wide differences exist between the approaches of such educators as Babcock (1969), Benedek (1969), (1972), G. Bibring (1954), Fleming (1969b), (1972) and Ross (1969) on the one hand and Bernfeld (1962), Anna Freud (1950, 1938), Greenacre (1966), Kairys (1964), McLaughlin (1967), Nacht (1954), Stone (quoted by Calef, 1972) and Szasz (1958), (1962) on the other. Nevertheless, psychoanalytic educators are preparing to alter the evaluative and reporting roles hitherto assigned to the training analyst, putting the moral force of action by official psychoanalytic organizations on the side of total protection of the confidentiality of the candidate. Calef (1972) reported to the 27th International Psycho-Analytical Congress in Vienna, 1971 that there was a 'growing trend towards the organizational elimination of the training analyst from the assessment procedures and a concomitant separation of the didactic analysis from the rest of psychoanalytic training'. The new approach to assessment of candidate progress is designed to assure that under no circumstances would the training analyst communicate with, or receive communication from, the governing committees of the Institute regarding his candidate's analytic progress or qualifications.

This proposal and suggestions now under consideration in some training centres that training analysis not even be a requirement during candidacy are based upon strongly felt impressions rather than facts. No reliable information is available about the analyst's satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the therapeutic outcome of his own training analysis or what weight he assigns to the various factors that have been presumed to come into play during training analysis. As Kairys (1964) acknowledges:

In all that has been written on how the training situation endangers the training analysis, one thin