On May 16, 1966, in Leyden, Holland, where Freud had walked with the composer Gustav Mahler during a psychoanalytic interview, the Dutch Psychoanalytic Society and the Leyden Foundation for Child Psychotherapy established a project to train child analysts only. This training program was designed to follow the pattern of the Dutch Psychoanalytic Society's adult psychoanalytic training program.
The new child analyst training program was reported on at the IPA congress in Rome in 1969. Extensive discussion led to the formation of a committee chaired by Samuel Ritvo, which recommended the analysis of three children and one adult as the minimal requirement for the training of a child analyst.
Thirty years later, after three years of deliberation, the APsaA's Committee on Child and Adolescent Analysis has approved the establishment of a pilot program for separate track training in child and adolescent analysis. The program's objective is the training of child analysts without the requirement of previous adult analytic training, just as the Dutch child analytic program did.
The committee, under the chairmanship of Ruth Karush, has selected four institutes to participate in the pilot program: the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, the Denver Institute for Psychoanalysis, the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute, and the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute. The Board on Professional Standards has ratified this decision.
The separate track training in child analysis will share APsaA's adult analytic training standards with respect to admission, progression, graduation, length of training, and curriculum. The pilot programs of the Columbia and Denver institutes will require analyzing three children; the institutes of Houston-Galveston and St. Louis will require analyzing three children and one adult. The Committee on Child and Adolescent Analysis will carefully monitor the unfolding of these pilot programs. Their outcomes will be measured by a research project in each institute to determine the effectiveness of this new model of child analytic training.
Each of the pilot programs will have distinctive features, but all will have common characteristics: a duration of four years, the tripartite model of analytic training, and a core curriculum combined with a curriculum in child analysis. Although the mechanisms are not in place, it is expected that graduates of the pilot program will be eligible for certification in child analysis and for full membership in the American Psychoanalytic Association. These graduates (who graduate as child analysts only) could also pursue adult analytic training if they chose to do so.
The pilot program of the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute envisions that candidates of both child and adult analysis will begin their training in the same classroom. Both would follow the core curriculum for the first two years of their analytic training. For the remaining two years, candidates would continue on different pathways.
In this program child and adult analysis candidates will all learn not only about the “reconstructed child” in the adult but also about the “actual child” in the child of flesh and blood. They will be exposed to an enhancing cross-fertilization between child and adult analysis. Candidates who begin their training interested in adult analysis only might become interested in child analysis. The reverse also could be true for candidates interested in child analysis only.
The pilot program in the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute will exist parallel with the institute's combined program in adult and child analysis, which trains adult and child analysts in a six-year curriculum. Both programs will share the core curriculum and the child analytic curriculum. The pilot program will permit graduates of the institute's child psychotherapy programs to enter directly into child analytic training, just as graduates of the adult psychotherapy programs enter directly into adult analytic training.
With the changes in APsaA in the last two decades, we need to search for new models of training that will find a fertile ground in this changing world. The separate track training in child analysis will permit the Association to gain experience in new models of training, as other institutions such as the Anna Freud Center and the Hanna Perkins Center have done thus far. A decade of experimenting with this new model of training should be an enriching and enhancing experience.
Julio Morales, M.D., is Director of Child Analysis for the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, where he is a training and supervising analyst.