Many psychoanalysts (and many candidates) regard the psychoanalytic institute as having essentially one function: to teach clinical technique. Training in research methods and encouragement of research have been relegated, at best, to secondary functions. A set of proposals presented at a workshop of the Council for the Advancement of Psychoanalytic Education and developed in a manuscript precirculated to a number of psychoanalytic educators, suggests, nevertheless, that the psychoanalytic institute should expand what it teaches to intensify its education for research.
The proposals, in brief, are these. First, analytic teaching should recognize that psychoanalysis is not only a therapeutic technique but also a research method and a body of knowlege. The psychoanalytic institute should therefore not only train analysts for clinical practice but also teach research techniques and encourage a scientific attitude toward analytic theory. We should not be so busy teaching what we believe to be true that we fail to ask “how do we know” and to test the validity of our beliefs.
The suggested broadening of interest would have many manifestations. For example, the standards for selection and progression of candidates and faculty should take note of research capability and inclination, along with other desired characteristics. Courses throughout the institute curriculum should acknowledge the findings of past analytic research and consider future research opportunities.
Second, the institute should facilitate for both candidates and faculty the option of a psychoanalytic career in which research plays a major part. Elective courses should teach research methodology and offer the opportunity for candidates to develop and conduct research projects of their own. Senior analysts with research in progress should offer tutorial or apprenticeship opportunities for candidates; identification with faculty is an important part of analytic education.
The institute should also give candidates the option of undertaking a full-fledged dissertation, meeting the standards of a first-class university PhD. program, including an oral defense. Such dissertations should be recognized by the award of a degree, such as a Ph.D. in psychoanalysis.
These projects need not conform to any single model; there are many varieties of analytic research. Some may involve systematic study of individual cases, carefully framing hypotheses and testing the clinical evidence that tends to confirm or disconfirm them. Other research may utilize experimental rather than clinical models, in a tradition dating back to Jung's studies of association. Still other work may use other methods. The subject matter of research may also vary. It may, for example, involve the analytic process, analysis as a therapeutic modality, propositions about psychic development or psychic functioning, or the application of analysis to other cultural or social fields.
Third, institutes should establish closer contacts with colleagues in other academic disciplines. Appropriate university faculty could participate in institute teaching and help supervise dissertations. The institute should also become a member of the regional association of schools and colleges. Almost all American universities, medical schools, and professional schools of all types belong to these regional associations. Such membership provides helpful consultation on educational methods and organization (about which analysts have something to teach and something to learn) and also entails accreditation of the degrees that the institute awards.
Analysis shares with many other disciplines the conflict between professional training and fundamental research. The analytic institute should take advantage of the experience of medical, graduate, and professional schools; it should not be a mere trade school but should adopt a model in the mainstream of higher education. In such a mainstream model, education for research has a role alongside training for practice.
A number of institute directors, APsaA. leaders, and other analysts and candidates have discussed these proposals, commenting on the precirculated manuscript or participating in the CAPE workshop. Their diverse reactions may be summarized in three groups.
Some hold that analytic education is already sufficiently excellent so that no substantial improvements are needed. No other purposes, they say, should be allowed to detract from the institute's central mission of teaching clinical technique. Furthermore, some think, the conduct of any psychoanalysis is itself the conduct of research. It would be unwarranted, one analyst commented, to seek to borrow research techniques from academic psychology or to model the institutes on the university graduate school.
Others believe, to the contrary, that analytic education is currently so deficient that those proposals would be unavailing. What is needed is a fundamental change in how analysts think, they argue, and changes in institute teaching are too superficial to have real effect. On the model of personality change through analysis, some believe that organizational and institutional reforms cannot bring about the substantial changes in the individual which would be required if analysts are to reason more rigorously.
Whatever requirements and standards are established, some say, any program sponsored by an existing institute would still be academically inferior, unworthy of the Ph.D. degree.
Still other commentators point out that their own work foreshadowed these proposals. Some respected analysts have put forward similar suggestions in the past. Others now conduct analytic research of their own and encourage it both informally and through official channels.
These reactions to the proposals invite comment in turn. Standards, organizational structure, and models do have influence on what analysts do. The existence of the Board of Professional Standards and of elaborate procedures and requirements on both national and local levels testifies to the widespread belief among analysts that the format of analytic education has significant influence on the analytic movement. What the institute teaches has great influence on what its graduates do in their career. Similarly, the high status the profession extends to the role of “training analyst” places a premium on clinical and teaching activity, which is currently not balanced either by a research requirement for such appointments or by any equivalently valued status of “research analyst.” Other fields consider research contributions of teachers to be an important factor in determining promotions.
The value of the present type of analytic education hardly needs defense here. Nevertheless, the current amount and quality of analytic research is widely acknowledged as insufficient. The institutes are important leverage points through which to encourage more analysts (with both medical and nonmedical backgrounds) to think in terms of the data supporting or disconfirming propositions and to manifest sophistication in developing theoretical models.
It is not accurate to idealize the academic excellence of university graduate work so much that it is regarded as a goal unattainable by the psychoanalytic institute. Many recognized Ph.D. programs are inferior to present analytic institutes in many respects. An institute that wished to do so should be able to establish a program offering training for analytic research that maintains the highest academic standards.
What might be done to develop further the proposals discussed here?
On the national level, one or more committees should take on the role of facilitating such changes. The Fund for Psychoanalytic Research and several committees of the Board on Professional Standards are among the bodies which can encourage consideration of such reforms. The proposals of the Conference on Psychoanalytic Education and Research show how widespread is the interest in related ideas.
On the local level, one or more institutes should begin to organize pilot projects to enrich their teaching along the lines discussed. A pilot project could call upon the assistance of analytic researchers from across the country, as well as university colleagues, in implementing and evaluating such experiments.
In its early years, the psychoanalytic movement taught clinical skills informally, relying primarily on the skills of the training analyst and the gifts of the candidates. After World War II, however, more formal instruction, curricula, and standards were set up, manifested on both the local and national level, to insure the quality of psychoanalytic work. Up until this time, the psychoanalytic movement has still trusted to informal methods to produce psychoanalytic researchers, relying on the example of a few senior analysts and the inspiration of those self-motivated enough to include a research component in their careers. But the results have not been satisfactory; too little research is being done to test, validate, and extend our psychoanalytic knowledge. Analysis should look to its own history, as well as to the example of other disciplines, and include in its organized instructional efforts a component providing education for research.
Martin L. Levine, J.D., LL.D.
Martha A. Lyon, Ph.D.
Los Angeles