Discussion of Angel Garma's Article, Group Rivalry Between Analysts and Its Influence on Candidates in Training

Dr. Garma has written an interesting paper which illuminates factors with which any psychoanalyst is familiar and which some, like Dr. Garma, have been impelled to investigate. For my part, a rueful aspect of the contemplation lies in the fact that one gradually feels forced to the conclusion that the cure for the problems adumbrated is one which Freud said was the method by which psychoanalysis could be shortened, namely, to do it properly. But—how to do it properly? There is no method or training or experience which can do more than place the prospective analyst's foot firmly on the bottom rung of the ladder. Nothing can prevent the agility—mental, political, and financial—of the candidate from exchanging this for the topmost rung. The only advice I can give the candidate is to repeat what a distinguished and experienced old lady said to me about her choice of personal physician: “As soon as I hear that my doctor has been made physician to the King or Queen I sack him.”

Dr. Garma seems to me to put his finger on a central point when he says, in speaking of the groups, that most of the Argentine analysts could not be classified in any group. It is known that the more successful an analytic procedure is, the more rapidly both the psychoanalyst and the analysand pass from the domain in which categories and types are relevant, for the individual psychoanalyst is dealing with a unique individual and therefore someone who cannot be categorized. Indeed, I would even suggest that one criterion for what is a successful analysis is the approximation of the analysand to a unique personality and a capacity to respect the unique quality of any other individual.

Before such a stage is reached, there can be a wish, both on the part of the psychoanalyst and of the analysand, to “jump his fences” and declare that he is a “candidate,” “training analyst,”

“Kleinian,” and so on. All these terms can, as Dr. Garma remarks, be used as standards around which to rally. Dr. Garma shows th