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This volume of papers by Otto Kernberg covers a wide range of topics. They span 30 years of his work and a number of them voice his criticisms of psychoanalytic education. Kernberg is a highly perceptive observer of the strengths and weaknesses of psychoanalytic training, with worldwide experience, and it is helpful to have these papers gathered in a single volume. One cannot read or re-read them without enormous respect and admiration for the persistence the author has shown in drawing analysts’ attention to his concerns.
Areas of interest include: the identity of the psychoanalyst; studies of group and organizational leadership; institutional problems; authoritarian culture and personality; the pressing need to increase research in and on psychoanalysis; psychoanalytic supervision; previous efforts to modify the education system and the need for new relationships between training institutes and university settings. The lighter tone of “Thirty methods to destroy the creativity of psychoanalytic candidates,” published in the IJPA 20 years ago, offers the reader some “respite,” but this account of ways in which our training can inhibit development and stifle creativity remains a disturbing theme.
The most recent account in the volume of Kernberg's views is the last chapter: “The Twilight of the Training Analyst System.” He believes psychoanalysis to be in a crisis and “that it is fair to state that, while psychoanalysis has assured its place as a major contribution to the culture in the twentieth century, its future as a profession and a science in the twenty-first century cannot be assumed” (p. 257). He describes a number of serious external and internal challenges to psychoanalysis in America, including the following (pp. 256–257):
that: “there has been a growing critique coming from federal funding sources, and private insurance companies of psychoanalysis as too long-term, too expensive, non-empirically validated treatment, cre