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Dr. Ticho is much concerned with problems to which, as a training analyst, I have given much thought, and to which there is no final solution but just evolutionary change, as in all sciences.
The problem of differentiation of personality traits (for which I prefer the term “identity”) from neurosis is a thorny one. I shall deal with this in terms of training analysis and supervision. A crisis occurs regularly in every training analysis as the student moves from identification and agreement with his analyst into differentiation and disagreement. Of course, there are substantial oedipal elements in this, but as these are analyzed, the disagreement-competition regularly persists. I submit that this phenomenon
is part of the evolutionary imperative: one is different from everyone else, and somehow this difference must be expressed and reconciled with society and one's analyst.
Both differentiation and reconciliation are essential for survival—e.g., Savonarola was unable to achieve reconciliation. The student's competition with his analyst is in part in the service of the evolution of psychoanalysis and in part oedipal, just as the adolescent's differentiation from his parents is partly in the service of the evolution of society and partly oedipal. It is here that the differentiation of “oedipal” vs. “evolutionary” is difficult to make.
It is at this point that the “cold-fish” compulsive training analyst sees merely the oedipal and destructive elements to the exclusion of the evolutionary-creative meaning. This is particularly true of the compulsive analyst who does not receive the sexual transferences of his warmer student, and regards such transference reactions as evidence of original sin, instead of realizing that the candidate need not reject them, but must learn to analyze them in the service of his own identity. Of course, analysis of oedipal material and of the exaggerated magical narcissistic appraisal of such differences by the candidate are also necessary.
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