While reflecting on our spring scientific meetings in New Orleans, it is timely to consider the ways in which psychoanalysis resembles jazz, both in its complexity and in its reliance on a frame. Allowing for limitless variations, these two disciplines offer ample range, from quiet resonance to individual expression. True students of these forms never believe they have mastered them. They remain open to new influences, on which they depend to keep their disciplines alive and thriving. The creative process is improvisational, experimental, and forever an unfinished product.
This opportunity to co-edit a TAP special section on “Innovations in Psychoanalytic Education” allows us to show how the spirit of improvisation can be brought to the teaching of psychoanalysis. Here you will read about a French model of group supervision, a creative model of classroom instruction, and recent IPA discussions of new methods of psychoanalytic education. Such pedagogical efforts come about because a person or group wanted to improve the methods of teaching psychoanalysts.
Each institute has its own culture, determined by such influences as size, reputation, the degree of competition with other local institutes, the legacy of its own influential leaders, and financial endowment. All institutes are, by their resources and attitudes, limited in their capacity to approximate an ideal psychoanalytic education. Nonetheless, there is always a push for doing it better. This special section of TAP reports on some of the ways analysts struggle to overcome conventional thinking and find innovative ways of teaching and learning psychoanalysis. We hope these new teaching methods can be adopted, elaborated on, and adapted to each institute's unique circumstances and predilections. We also hope the spirit of creativity captured in these articles will encourage further experimentation.
The ideas discussed here represent only a few of many potential areas of innovation in psychoanalytic education. Many other areas of psychoanalytic education are in various stages of development, revision, and implementation. The (incomplete) list of further possibilities below indicates the wider context of the psychoanalytic educational terrain.
Ph.D. programs in psychoanalysis.
Candidates teaching institute courses in their areas of expertise.
Local institutes sharing electives with each other.
Teleconferencing of classes between institutes.
Courses for candidates on supervision.
Use of the “problem-based learning” method in teaching.
Programmatic switching of supervisors.
Programmatic consultations with additional supervisors.
Courses for supervisors on the technique of supervision.
Courses on the fundamentals of medication for non-M.D.s.
Education on the methods of supportive and exploratory psychotherapy.
Courses on methods of teaching and pedagogy.
Courses on research methodology including important research to date.
Progression reviews that directly involve candidates.
Evaluation of teachers and supervisors by students and supervisees.
Seminars on how to develop an analytic practice.
Post-graduate seminars for continuing education.
Coordinated courses with local universities (e.g. neurosciences, medications).
Separation of the supervisor track from the training analyst track.
Revision of the requirements for training analyst and supervisor.
Coordination of local research with national research projects.
Innovative programs are not limited to individuals and institutes. Within the American too, the spirit of educational change is evident. Efforts are under way to survey both the consumers of psychoanalytic education — the candidates — and the institutes, in an effort to learn where people are pleased with the educational process and where they feel it fails.
One such effort is Project 2000, a BOPS task force. Having gathered a great deal of data, the members of Project 2000 have tried to pinpoint such variables as the atmosphere for learning and the locus of authority, as well as to identify innovative teaching methods and models. Some examples include problem-based learning and programs emphasizing critical thinking, the latter exemplified by the approach described in Jeffrey K. Halpern's article on page 11. More recently, Project 2000 has begun to address issues related to the training analyst system, including whether the status of the training analyst should be seen as an endpoint or the beginning of a lifetime of learning. In keeping with its charge of addressing all areas of the analytic educational process, Project 2000 continues to sponsor a series of workshops at the meetings of the American, most recently one in New Orleans on supervision.
In an effort to reach beyond our current educational grasp, we look in this special section at specific educational innovations in this country and abroad, followed by recent international discussions about psychoanalytic education. Ellen Sparer, an American who trained in France and now practices psychoanalysis there, writes about the method and aims of a French innovation in psychoanalytic education: group supervision (in France called “collective supervision”). Halpern describes a new approach to classroom instruction, a two-instructor teaching method developed at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. (These first two articles both integrate a “third” point of view into the educational process). Otto Kernberg summarizes the discussion of a paper on “Problems in Psychoanalytic Education” that he presented to the Executive Council of the IPA, a group that represents an international diversity of perspectives on psychoanalytic education.
Lee Jaffe, Ph.D., is president-elect of the International Psychoanalytic Studies Organization. He is a member of the BOPS Project 2000 team and TAP's editorial board, and he is on the faculty and Education Committee of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute. David Orbison, Ph.D., is on the faculty of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Institute.