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A primary and ubiquitous stumbling block in the functioning of an institute is the extent to which candidates and institute members project onto each other as blocs. It behooves all of us who are involved in analytic training to take up these projections directly and to seek out data relating to individual and group-level experiences. In this way, we can try to reality test the fantasies we project onto one another. Dear Institute provides a plethora of evidence that can help counteract the assumptions that we are prone to as we invariably gravitate towards paranoid-schizoid ways of organising the world(s) around us. And this is some data! The perceptions, observations, interpretations and self-reflections throughout these letters are textured and nuanced and are conveyed with great humility. This is particularly impressive as these reflections are given by people engaged in the rigorous and often disorienting process of allowing one’s psyche to be the subject of a 360-degree circle of observation and feedback – all while learning to provide the same gift to themselves and to their analysands. That is, the data is presented in a way that accords with Winnicott’s theory emphasising the presence of an external reality that is instrumental in facilitating the development of the mind and that contributes to shaping inner realities. Most of the authors acknowledge the impact of their own inner conflicts, their psychic realities, as well as the reality of the actual institute’s functioning, to parse out one from the other. No easy task, to be sure.
We may not be surprised to see that the feature of training that is described and shown in almost every one of the 38 letters is ambivalence towards the institute. More specifically, the majority of the letters begin with descriptions of starting training with excited anticipation, a sense of having entered the halls of a magnificent and storied castle, of being dismayed by the exalted level of discourse with instructors, superv