Epilogue

There are a Number of Threads That Run Across Many of These articles—self-discovery, struggle, and development of a unique and personal analytic way of being. One can see from these articles that the contributors are discovering their own analytic voices despite coming from diverse training institutions in terms of theoretical orientation.

Struggle seems to be an important part of analytic development. In this issue, the contributors have described the struggles of their training differently. Sometimes the struggle has been primarily internal as described by Carr, Kay, Furman, and to some extent Krausz; other times, as with Döll and Levin, the struggle has been primarily between the candidate and the institute. In the latter instance, it is striking to note each contributor's effort to engage and transcend the limitations and difficulties found in their training. In another vein, Pedroni describes a struggle with her second analyst that helped her clarify her own clinical approach and helped her choose her psychoanalytic training institute.

How can we understand the current situation in which individuals seeking treatment from analysts with diverse ideas about psychopathology, clinical approach, and therapeutic action are being helped? How can we understand the fact that candidates from psychoanalytic institutes representing different theoretical orientations find, for the most part, that their training is fostering their development as analytic practitioners and thinkers? I believe the answer to these questions may lie in the fit of the match. The particular person-to-person fit between an analyst and a patient makes each analytic dyad unique and is part of what creates the therapeutic ambiance necessary for analytic work to proceed. This may be similar to the kind of fit between an institute's intellectual and training environment and the unique subjectivity of a candidate that is necessary for psychoanalytic training to proceed successfully. One way to understand t