Problems of Training Analysis: A Critical Review of Current Concepts

We refused most emphatically to turn a patient who puts himself into our hands in search of help into our private property, to decide his fate for him, to force our own ideals upon him, and with the pride of a Creator to form him in our own image and see that it is good. I still adhere to this refusal … Occasions now and then arise in which the physician is bound to take up the position of teacher and mentor. But it must always be done with great caution, and the patient should be educated to liberate and fulfill his own nature, not to resemble ourselves.

Perhaps the earliest mention of a training analysis was recorded on October 22, 1909, when Freud wrote Ferenczi: “Eitingon is here. Twice weekly, after dinner, he comes with me for a walk and has his analysis during it.” On November 10, 1909, twenty days later, Freud wrote Ferenczi: “Eitingon, who has fetched me twice weekly for an evening walk during which he has had his analysis, is coming for the last time next Friday; he intends to settle for a year in Berlin” (Balint 1954, p. 157). This analytic dialogue over a three-week period, based on the apprentice-master model, gradually underwent a transformation culminating in a three-to-seven-year analytic dialogue between a “training analyst” and a