Introduction

This issue of Modern Psychoanalysis is organized around articles written by candidates in training at some of the psychoanalytic training centers where modern psychoanalytic theory is studied and taught. One of the primary goals of the educational process at these schools is to resolve resistances to learning—central among which is avoiding conscious awareness of unpleasant ideas, feelings, or reactions to the patient—either subjective or objective countertranference responses. Hyman Spotnitz characterized some of these in his Modern Psychoanalysis of the Schizophrenic Patient as the need not to feel hate, the need to be liked, and the need to be right.

These student authors each experienced one or more of those resistances, along with others. With input from instructors, supervisors, classmates, and sometimes the synergy generated in their personal training analysis, they made progress in their own development toward becoming more confident and proficient in the difficult, aspirational task of learning to have, consciously and comfortably, more of their thoughts and feelings, and how to use those in a constructive, therapeutic way with their patients. An important component of their learning is concentrated on the techniques introduced by Spotnitz and his early colleagues as a method for treating the preoedipal disorders, but which are valuable tools in the treatment of other