Do Cultural Differences Affect Training or Have All Analysts, Across Cultures, Been Trained Equally Since 1920?1

The aim of this panel was to present preliminary results drawn from 252 email surveys and 94 interviews with candidates in psychoanalytic training in the three regions of the IPA, part of a continuing research project, ‘International Perspective on Psychoanalytic Training and Local Institutional Culture.’2 This project is among the first studies done by candidates concerning international psychoanalytic training experiences.

The Principal Investigator of the research is Andrea R. Q. de Pereira, and the Co-investigators who participated in this presentation are María Rita Ragau, and Laura Borensztein (Pereira et al., 2004). The object of the study was to contribute to psychoanalytic education by providing an international database from which to explore and compare candidates’ opinions about educational policies and experiences in seminars, supervision, and training analysis. An area of particular interest for the investigators was the impact of social reality—expressed in the forms of local culture and training institution culture—on the mindset of candidates.

Susana Muszkat, President of IPSO, introduced the panel. Placing the research in an historical context, María Rita Ragau noted that Max Eitingon's tripartite model of psychoanalytic education became compulsory for candidates in 1925. As King (1994) records, by 1927, Eitingon, then President of the IPA, reported that, in the large societies of Berlin, London and Vienna, training was actually being done along similar lines. However, there were certain differences of emphasis in psychoanalytic theory, and these differences evolved into the famous Anna Freud/Melanie Klein Controversial Discussions that stimulated intense affect and heated debate in the British Psycho-Analytical Society and in the IPA at that time.

Recently, communications from both the President-Elect and the Secretary of the IPA indicate that controversy and passion about issues of analytic education continue to exist. Cláudio Laks Eizirik, Porto Ale