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The problem of training in psychoanalysis which confronts us today is not a mere matter of pedagogical technique. How it is to be done, who shall do it, who shall be trained, and how many, are important questions. However, the basic questions are what do we want to teach, and to what end is our teaching to be directed? Unless we find common ground in the answers to these questions there can be no meeting of minds, no resolution of the other problems presented.
As one reads the minutes of various conferences on training and education which have been held since 1940, one is struck by the fact that there is a tendency to avoid the issues which arise from these basic questions. If we view the material of the minutes as we do the material of a psychoanalytic hour, we are impressed that the corporate patient is talking all around the point with only here and there an accession of something clear and explicit.
At the Richmond meeting of the Association in 1941, Dr. Helene Deutsch stated that '… an intuitive understanding of unconscious processes cannot be learned. A person who does not have this gift cannot become a good analyst.'1 At the same meeting, Dr. Adolf Meyer said '… if one wants to belong to the analytic group one has to be capable of working with the unconscious. One cannot only tinker with it.'2
At the Boston meeting in 1942, Dr. French stated that … students should know psychoanalysis historically. It is necessary that people know how to practice psychoanalysis but I do