The Sixth IPA Conference of Training Analysts, held in Amsterdam before the Congress, provided an opportunity for training analysts from around the world to share clinical experiences in small discussion groups. These were arranged so that training analysts from the same institute were, whenever possible, assigned to different groups, allowing them to discuss difficult problems with colleagues uninvolved with sensitive local issues. Expectations were high that the relatively neglected topic of the conference—Supervision: A Clinical Approach—would be ideal for this format.
The Organizing Committee, chaired by Betty Joseph of London, with Sara Zac de Filc (Buenos Aires) and David Sachs (Philadelphia) as co-chairs, introduced two innovations to facilitate the small group discussions. First, brief vignettes were solicited from all participants; these were to be submitted anonymously in advance of the conference. Second, the IPA candidates organization (IPSO) was asked to prepare a paper giving the candidate's perspective on supervision. This paper and the vignettes were then woven into an introductory paper by Sachs, so that all of the discussion groups would have a common basis from which to begin. This focus on clinical examples rather than abstract generalizations proved highly successful. Although some discussion groups preferred to use clinical examples of their own and ignored the anonymous vignettes, the example they set was enthusiastically embraced.
Over 240 training analysts participated, of whom 70 were from The American and the IPA New Groups. Of the 21 discussion groups, 14 were conducted in English, 1 in German, 2 in French, and 4 in Spanish. The topic of supervision proved even more engaging than had been anticipated, as some groups worked through coffee breaks and others through lunch. No one asked to change groups during the first two days of the meeting, and almost everyone attended a closing plenary session, at which Phyllis Tyson of San Diego summarized the main ideas reported out of the groups.
Perhaps the most significant finding to emerge is that the tripartite foundation of psychoanalytic training no longer functions effectively as an educational system. In the opening plenary session, Sachs had noted this possibility, citing as causes two widespread trends: training analyses are rarely available for evaluation by psychoanalytic educators, and course work seldom if ever disqualifies a candidate, because achievement is not systematically evaluated.
The conclusion—that the evaluative aspect of psychoanalytic education teeters on the single leg of supervision rather than standing on three legs—came as a surprise to some and as a shock to others. Even the few participants who had begun to suspect that something was amiss in the tripartite model were unaware that it has in fact become dysfunctional. This brought home all the more the distressing fact that training in how to conduct a supervision is provided in only a handful of institutes. The report from IPSO served to underscore the consequences of the untrained supervisor; candidates find supervision highly variable in quality and note that supervisors commonly underestimate their importance.
In her summary remarks, Tyson reported that many training analysts find that supervision occasionally places them in severe conflicts between their various responsibilities—to professional standards and to the candidate's patient, to the candidate's education and to the institute in which they work. Although such situations may be the exception rather than the rule, when conflicts do arise the supervisor is placed under great stress, with little help available through institute procedures. No doubt the high interest evinced in this conference was due in part to the pent-up frustrations of those in attendance.
At conference's end, questionnaires were distributed to the participants in order to obtain feedback on its success. There was almost universal praise for the topic, format, and overall quality of the discussions. Many rated it the best Training Analyst Conference to date, and a majority urged the IPA to repeat the topic at the 1995 meeting in San Francisco, a suggestion looked upon favorably by the new Organizing Committee.