Response

Dear Sir,

I read with great interest Imre Szecsödy's response to my paper, with which I am in full agreement.

The tendency—explored initially by Balint and Bernfeld, and more recently by Kernberg, Lussier and others—to push candidates into a passive position within a rigid training structure has been very much on my mind, and is more fully discussed in another paper of mine (2000—‘The utopian fantasy of a new person and the danger of a false analytic self’. Psychoanal.

Psychol., 17: 38-60), also initially presented in Barcelona, in 1997.

I participated in the Pre-Congress on Training that Szecsödy describes, and found the format very productive. For example, some processes in the supervisor-supervisee dyad that presented in my discussion group could only be noticed by juxtaposing the supervisor's account and the supervisee's account, and I believe these processes would have escaped the group's attention completely had we heard only one or the other alone.

I therefore did not share the objections to the joint format raised mostly by British colleagues (most of whom avoided participating) and French colleagues (who came but expressed many concerns).

I felt, however, that there was something problematic in having groups composed of twelve to fourteen training analysts and one candidate (the supervisee in the presenting supervisor-supervisee dyad). My suggestion in the concluding discussion was to have in the future one joint day of the pre-congress on training and of the IPSO (candidates') conference, a day in which the discussion groups will be composed about equally of faculty members and of candidates (possibly not from the same institute).

This possibility has not materialised so far, but I do hope it will in the future.

Sincerely

July 2000