You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
I find Dr. Dorn's paper extremely interesting. He deals clearly and straightforwardly with various problems, criticisms and warnings regarding the unresolved complexities that characterize some aspects of the current system of psychoanalytic education. Its simultaneously suggestive and challenging title starts a trend of ideas not easy to summarize in such a brief discussion.
Dr. Dorn's preoccupation is part of a question that has lately arisen in connection with training analysis. Several of his basic points have been dealt with by other authors and discussed in special meetings.
During the first Pre-Congress Conference on Training held in Amsterdam in 1965, one of the most compelling topics was that of the training analyst's dual syncretistic role as teacher (judge) and therapist: some participants took the position that the “training analyst should be totally insulated and isolated from involvement in matters of assessment of the candidate's training progress and qualifications, lest the intimate confidentiality between the analyst and his candidate patient be contravened
to the extent that the analysis could hardly be therapeutic or representative of the analytic process.“
Although I am in agreement with Dr. Dorn's general approach, I believe it necessary to analyze the essential factors which, to my mind, have a bearing on the origin and maintenance of some of the difficult problems in training analysis, and I shall briefly review the three areas in this peculiar process: the training analyst himself, the candidate and the Institution.
What are the elements in these areas that have yielded the configuration of what could be termed the institutionalized acting out of a fantasy of dependence on an authority figure (with the attributes of father, mother, critic and judge) by a submissive figure that strengthens its submissiveness in order to be accepted as a “normal” candidate?
In one of my papers,1 I pointed out the factors inherent in the nature of analytic practi