Author's Response

The discussion raised many interesting points. I had hoped perhaps for more discussion on the possible dangers, as well as the advantages, of seminars of the kind I described being used in the training of psychoanalysts. Helen Ross, for whose comments I am grateful, points to one possible danger, namely that the seminars might unduly diminish the conflicts which the candidate must solve in his own analysis the better to help his patients. I, of course, agree entirely that the essence of analytic therapy is to face and not to avoid conflict, but I put forward the idea that conflicts may sometimes be exaggerated artificially during the analytic training, and this can distort the relationship between the intrapsychic forces and the external world and may impede the work of analysis.

Dr. Marie Langer's comments are apposite and I am stimulated and interested by the points she raises, as I was by her and her co-authors' paper in Volume 45 of the “International Journal.” I am glad that she stresses the very great difference between a psychoanalytic institute, where candidates have to be taught a theory and a skill, and the Tavistock Clinic where general practitioners have not to be instructed in a body of theory or a particular skill or technique. Our aim is more to help to awaken in the doctors a sensitivity so that they can find their own particular skills insofar as these skills are available to them. We certainly do not present our participants with our own or our colleagues' ideas about how G.P.'s should work.

Dr. Langer also raises the point that analysts

often lack knowledge or training in the techniques and methods of teaching in a group setting. It is indeed true that analysts are not necessarily inherently good teachers; they have to learn like everybody else. I agree also with Dr. Langer that the difficulties I discussed about the training process are not by any means the only ones. What I missed, perhaps, in Dr. Langer's most interesting remarks were comments