Prologue

This Issue Focuses on the Process of Becoming a Psychoanalyst as described by the personal stories of recent graduates from eight contemporary psychoanalytic training programs. It also includes the experience of an individual who participated in a psychoanalytic psychotherapy program. The idea for this issue evolved from my participation on a panel of candidates for the International Conference on the Psychology of the Self in 2002. The four panel members, including me, were candidates from four U.S. institutes affiliated with self psychology. Each panel member presented a short article describing an aspect of our training experience—this occurred in the fourth year of my training.

I enjoyed writing about my psychoanalytic training experience and wanted to expand my article. I sensed that the very process of writing would be valuable—it would provide an opportunity for me to reflect on my experience and consolidate my analytic identity—although this is a work in progress. Following that meeting, I proposed the idea for an issue of Psychoanal. Inq. that focused on the personal experiences of recent graduates from a diverse group of contemporary psychoanalytic training programs. I wanted to expand the dialogue to include contributors from a range of psychoanalytic training institutions representing differing theoretical orientations, and I wanted to include international contributors. In this issue there are six articles from the United States, representing contributors from Miami, Florida; Washington, D.C.; East Lansing, Michigan; Los Angeles, California; and two articles from New York, New York. On the international side there are three articles, representing contributors from Rome, Italy; Frankfurt, Germany; and Canberra, Australia.

Another motivation for this issue with its focus on contemporary psychoanalytic training involved the idea of providing an intimate view of contemporary psychoanalytic training experience and a sense of what it offers, both personally and