Discussion

The authors present and discuss a model for selecting patients to be analyzed by psychoanalytic candidates. They suggest that patients first be interviewed by experienced analysts and then discussed by a larger group of practicing analysts. In this view, the main focus of the assessment should be the prerequisites for the development of a psychoanalytic process.

The most striking thing to me about the proposed model is the differences in our conceptualizations of what a candidate analyst is, does, and requires. They conceive of and experience student analysts as quite different from their teachers. Implicit in their model is the view that candidate analysts are not able to select and develop analytic patients. Candidates are viewed as doing “supervised psychoanalysis,” which is somehow different from ordinary psychoanalysis. Similarly, “the selection of patients for supervised analyses by candidates involves special evaluation” (p. 169; emphasis added). Finally, the authors are interested in selecting “the patients most likely to benefit from supervised psychoanalysis” (p. 151).

This is a variety of the idealized models that have existed in psychoanalytic training institutions for decades. Its purpose is the search for the mythical “good case.” A patient is sought who will experience an analysis most like the ideal one, according to the particular theoretical framework of the institute. A person is sought who will become a cooperative patient, who will not be too difficult to work with, and who will have a good result.

My view of this approach to future analysts is that it doesn't sufficiently consider or adequately prepare the student for the realistic