The future of psychoanalytic education, and consequently the future of psychoanalysis itself, rests almost entirely on the continuing support of a community of analysts willing to sacrifice for the sake of their science and profession. In recent decades the members of the American analytic community have distributed themselves into two major groups, each harmoniously interacting with the other. Some concentrate their efforts directly on education: the administrators, teachers, training and supervising analysts. Others work to strengthen the profession and extend its scientific achievements: those practitioners not formally involved with psychoanalytic education, scholars, researchers and administrators of psychiatric programs, many of whom provide links to the ancillary disciplines. One conserves; the other radicalizes and extends. Each contribution has become so specialized and complex that it is often difficult to serve both areas effectively at the same time.
These two groups divide their tasks and areas of responsibility under the aegis of institutes and societies at local levels, and in the Board on Professional Standards and the Executive Council of the American Psychoanalytic Association at the national level. It must be emphasized that these are components of one organization and that they are totally reliant on one another despite the appearance of autonomy. Educators are sensitive to the reciprocal relationship between conditions of psychoanalytic practice and the number and quality of applicants for training, and the guardians of the profession would soon lose their credibility and influence if they were not supported by a continuous inflow of competent colleagues dedicated to mutually determined high standards. As a consequence, those whose primary concern is education listen attentively to arguments that this or that pedagogic direction might impair the conditions of practice; while analysts who work as well to insure the so-called professional interests enthusiastically support the requirement of carefully assessed analytic expertise for formal membership in the national organization, thereby assuring the sustained value of such membership.
When it is functioning harmoniously, this intimate partnership hardly seems the product of two different bases of activity. However, when one or the other forgets or foregoes the common identity and goals, tensions develop at the border of the alliance. These tensions signal that the collaboration may be threatened and that the whole analytic support system may be in jeopardy. Usually, this ushers in a period of reflection and exchange.
There are three chief causes of such tensions: the lure of power, scientific disputes, and a decline in the recognition that psychoanalysis is an effective clinical instrument. Of these, the first two are of lesser importance, except when they serve as screens for the third.
The aim of acquiring power can be a pressing motive and has an appeal to many. Most psychoanalytic institutions, however, have tried to create tables of organizations which insure that not too much power will come to rest on two few for too long. A continuous overseeing of local facilities by visiting colleagues through designated committees and sub-committees of the Board on Professional Standards of the national organization further guards against such a danger. Power by itself, even when it is willed to the next generation by a charismatic leader, can usually be expected to flag in time.
Scientific controversy produces tensions, but it is rarely disruptive. Such disputes, if anything, suggest health and vigor, as long as they are resolved on the basis of accrued clinical evidence. Only when power is applied as an additional instrument of persuasion can tensions of a more serious degree emerge.
The greatest threat to the harmonious alliance occurs if there is a decline in the recognition of the value of psychoanalysis as a unique and effective treatment modality. There are many signs of such a decline: in institutes, a clinically dull curriculum, where theoretical issues are poorly integrated with live analytic data; in societies, long sequences of scientific meetings with no papers representing the achievements and discoveries derived from therapeutic analysis; in both groups, a too-ready submission to external pressures derived from the “realities” of modern American life.
The most pernicious sign, however, is a blurring of the distinction between analysis and psychotherapy. This can develop where institutes fail to educate candidates about the compelling differences in a systematic and clinically relevant manner. Such a failing should be a signal to the local guardians of the profession to register concern—it is in their interest to do so. Where practitioners, on the other hand, seem too ready to opt for psychotherapy for reasons not necessarily in the best long-term interests of their patients, it is time for the community educators to react. In no other circumstance is the strength of the alliance more thoroughly tested. Once one group fails to recognize the value of clinical analysis and the necessity of practicing psychoanalysis to maintain a meaningful common identity, the other part of the analytic support system is sure to follow. The loss is to all, in the present and in the future.
To summarize metaphorically: psychoanalytic education rests almost exclusively on the supports created by the analytic community. The arch emerges out of two equally strong, harmoniously-balanced bases, the organized educators and the organized guardians of the profession. Its keystone is the continuing recognition of how effective clinical psychoanalysis can be.
Samuel Abrams
New York