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From The Time of My Own Training in The 1970S at The Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, psychoanalytic education has been an active interest of mine. I have participated as a supervisor and faculty member at several institutes, but most particularly I have been the Dean of Training at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health since 1995. In the process I have been responsible for helping my institute adapt to the changing landscape of psychoanalytic theory and practice while preserving the unique and valuable aspects of a training program that has been in existence for over 50 years. It has been a challenging endeavor.
All training institutes with which I am familiar have consistently included four elements in their programs: didactic course work, supervision of control cases, personal analysis of the candidate in training, and clinical experience. Yet within this framework much variation in requirements and standards exists. For instance, some institutes advocate a particular theoretical position and give only limited reference to other theoretical models, while other institutes offer a more balanced theoretical approach. Institutes vary considerably in the number of analytic patients that must be seen by a candidate and even differ in the minimum weekly frequency of the analysis of those analytic patients. Some institutes require a concurrent personal analysis and specify the weekly frequency and total minimum number of sessions, while others accept previous analytic experience or are considerably more flexible in the frequency and total number of sessions required. Some training institutes emphasize a clinical experience that is extensive and is supported by referrals from the program, while others are concerned only with the analytic cases and