Chapter 10 The Coming Changes in Psychoanalytic Education: Part II1

What follows is the continuation of concrete recommendations to deal with the current problems in psychoanalytic education. Part I of this study (Chapter 9) explored the challenges that psychoanalytic institutes face at this time, and proposed significant changes in the training analysis system and in the supervisory process. The present Part II presents concrete recommendations regarding institute governance, the curriculum, the admission, progression and graduation of candidates, and the process of certification and accreditation of institutes.

Clinical and theoretical seminars, obviously, should be taught by teachers who are competent, enthusiastic, and able to communicate their knowledge and enthusiasm regarding a particular subject to the candidate. Selection of seminar leaders may be made on the basis of experiences in group seminars, supervision, and post-graduate activities of the society. For psychoanalytic institutes connected with or located within a university setting (e.g. a department of psychiatry or clinical psychology), faculty from related disciplines should be maximally utilized for teaching. In general, the artificial dissociation between institute activities and the psychoanalytic society’s life is clearly detrimental to the selection of institute faculty, by constricting the pool of talent from which seminar leaders may be recruited.

Teaching assignments should be for a limited period of time, rather than becoming a permanent right or monopoly of some faculty for certain subject matters. Joint clinical or theoretical seminars of candidates and society members may further break down the isolation of the psychoanalytic institute.

Bartlett (2003) proposes abandoning the practice of closed cohorts from year to year, suggesting that seminars should start out with the same cohort in order to facilitate bonding of the candidates’ group and to provide a minimum common basis of knowledge, after which candidates should fee