On Evading Analysis by Becoming an Analyst

This paper considers what implications Bion's famous anecdote about ‘some patients getting better and others going on to become psycho-analysts’ might have in clinical practice. It explores key stages in the post-qualification analyses of three practitioners whose training analyses had left them qualified but restless and dissatisfied with their ongoing work. It suggests that a significant common factor in these unsatisfactory outcomes was the weakness of these analysands’ egos, understood as their inability to enjoy coniunctios, and their profound fear of accessing the source of the problem. This had led to an unwitting investment in spurious super-ego driven alternatives such as professional qualification rather than face the initially bleak realization (of ‘nameless dread’) that could initiate analysis and individuation. Because of the containment and reward implicit in the training environment it is argued that training analysts—despite their experience and expertise—remain vulnerable to being recruited into an ameliorative fantasy that blocks the transference and inhibits development.