Author's Response

I am most grateful to the discussants for the enthusiasm and intelligence with which they have studied and improved my paper. I am sorry that I cannot reply more amply, for, as Dr. F. McLaughlin

suggests, I, too, would very much like to keep the dialogue open.

I agree with Dr. Bion that, as the analytic changes progress, the psychoanalyst and the analysand “pass from the domain in which categories are relevant” to “the approximation of the analysand to a unique personality.” That is why the capacity of the training analyst can be observed in the affective and ideologic independence which his analysands get from him. I also agree that it is necessary to “sack” the training analyst as soon as he becomes the “psychoanalyst to the King or Queen” or when he shows signs of putting on airs of grandeur in front of the candidates and members of his psychoanalytic association.

My paper also refers to Dr. Brierley's point that “the only way to deal with the adverse effects on the trainees of rivalries between the analysts is to analyze them” and that “the problem is really a specific variation of transference analysis.” It is precisely because of this latter motive that I believe, although Dr. Brierley thinks it “unlikely,” that every student necessarily develops “persecutory internal analysts.” In my opinion this is something which would occur even if the psychoanalytic associations and the analysts were perfect. Psychoanalytical associations and analysts are very important objects to the trainee, who is also a neurotic individual. It is therefore inevitable that he change his objects systematically, by projecting onto his psychoanalytic associations and his analysts the images of his persecutory internal objects which are primitively related to his parents. Furthermore, I believe that the analysis of these contents, which I have named persecutory internal analysts, ordinarily occurs in any training analysis, even in the cases in which the training analyst does not see it hi