Evaluation of Learning in Psychoanalytic Clinical Practice and Supervision

In psychoanalytic training institutions, there is a pedagogical conflict inherent: The respective training/teaching generation of psychoanalysts regard their theoretical and clinical knowledge as learning goals for the next generation of psychoanalysts. If teaching goals and learning goals are merged together, teaching takes place mostly in a projective and possessive manner. From this perspective, supervision is probably the main place of transmitting the structural psychoanalytic superego-complex (Kahl-Popp 2005, 2007; Reeder, 2004), which can paralyze learning capacities and further development of the next generation of analysts.

To solve this pedagogical conflict it is necessary to abandon the paradigm fulfilling the targets of teaching/training analysts and supervisors. For this purpose, basic lines of a psychoanalytic concept of learning are described. The affinities between learning in psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic treatment, and learning in supervision are characterized. Symptoms, experiences of emotional discrepancies, and interactional dysfunctions are considered as demands of learning in both fields. Furthermore the answering interventions—interpretations, relational and supportive interventions or instructions—of psychoanalysts and supervisors will be investigated from the perspective of being helpful or not helpful for the learning capacities of patients and supervisees. A patient- and supervisee-centered psychoanalytic concept of evaluation is proposed. In this evaluation concept, the manifest and latent feedback of patients and supervisees, following directly to an intervention, is regarded as an important source for orientation, which will be needed to learn in psychoanalytic clinical practice and supervision.

It is illustrated how this evaluation concept can be used for research purposes to investigate the impact of supervision on learning psychoanalytic–psychotherapeutic competence.