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I strongly recommend all psychoanalysts to read this book, which is a translation from the Swedish, originally published in 2001. The work is mind opening and academic in its depth and thoroughness, enjoyable for the language the author uses so well and a must for all of us who work, train and are trained as analysts.
This book results from a study supported by the Pedagogical Institution of Stockholm University to which the author is affiliated and is infused with the author's long-lasting creative co-operation with a group expert in psychoanalytical theory and research. Jurgen Reeder is a training analyst member of the Swedish Psychoanalytic Association, and is an author of books and articles on the theory and application of psychoanalysis. His book is a serious, thought-provoking, thorough and comprehensive account of psychoanalytic education, its history, its practice, the different functions of personal versus training analysis, didactic training and supervision. He explores the underlying assumptions and ideas of how training is structured and practised in different societies and cultures. The publications he refers to are numerous and wide ranging and he clearly shows how confrontations about training are often heated and divergent, as well as repetitive.
In the first two chapters the author clearly sets out his personal view of psychoanalysis, as a meeting between two unique individuals who become engaged in an intersubjective dialogue, in which each of them is experienced as parts of the world and of one another. This dialogue takes form within the framework of the psychoanalytic situation, and is influenced by how the analyst relates to and uses psychoanalytic theories. He warns against the illusion of ‘knowing’, and advises the use of theorising as ‘a disciplined speculation about the fundamental structures of