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We believe that few will contradict us when we state that of all educational tracks, psychoanalytic clinical training is the most difficult. This is not necessarily because of the intellectual challenge, but because of the emotional stress involved in being a patient, a therapist, and a student all at once—and this over and above other professional and family obligations.
As if this were not deterrent enough, the impression persists that students are oppressed by an orthodoxy of thought which stifles spontaneity and diversity of discussion. We expect that this impression will be forever dispelled by the following papers by three advanced students at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, in which they were given the opportunity to reflect on their educational experiences in an unfettered manner.
We, as Editors and Instructors, gave the students guarantee of journalistic safe passage, and have deliberately refrained from altering their communications in any way. In so doing we will perhaps incur some complaints from our colleagues along the lines of: “Don't we have enough trouble already without publishing references to dozing teachers?” But our colleagues know that “Even Homer nods,” and we hasten to reassure our readers that educators in the institution described will generally be found to be fully awake while conducting their activities. We hope that these essays convey both the difficulties and the rewards of analytic education in a manner that will be valuable to teachers and students alike.