Discussion

Discussions of psychoanalytic education have traditionally focused on three distinct themes: (1) personal analysis, (2) supervision, and (3) the didactic curriculum; these are reflected in this collection of articles. Personal analysis is central to Szönyi and Stajner-Popovic's discussion of the extreme challenge of “shuttle analysis,” when analyst and analysand live in different locations, are members of different cultures, may even speak different languages, and work on a schedule that is a constant reminder of those differences. They find that shuttle training works, and remind us that analysis is sturdy enough to survive in many contexts. Training analyses can be nonreporting, conducted by analysts not affiliated with the candidate's institute, with analysts from other cities or other countries, or on atypical schedules, and yet psychoanalysis thrives.

Several articles focus on supervision. Pegeron describes a course on supervision for candidates, a component of the curriculum that is designed “to help candidates be better consumers of supervision, develop an identity as psychoanalytic supervisors, and appreciate the need for training in supervision.” Szecsödy sees the primary task of supervision as providing “optimal conditions for the candidate to integrate his experiences, theoretical knowledge and his personality for a competent participation in and handling of the psychoanalytic situation and process.” He emphasizes facilitating the candidate's exploration of himself as an analyst, rather than instructing him in how to do analysis, as well as the need for study and evaluation of supervisors and of the supervisory process.

I was disappointed that there was no mention of a pet theme of mine, the importance of unsupervised clinical work. Candidates can go for years with close supervision of every clinical experience, along with the danger that they learn to be supervisees, rather than psychoanalysts. I think that we should experiment with admixtures of supervise