One of the most important changes to our revised Standards for Education and Training adopted last June is the new waiver which allows an institute to apply for a waiver of a training analysis for a prospective candidate who has been in an established analysis with an analyst who is not a training analyst. Since this waiver is one of the most confusing and misunderstood aspects of our new standards, we have decided to devote the first of our “BOPS: Just the FAQ's” columns, in which we will periodically address BOPS's most frequently asked questions, to this topic.
We greatly appreciate all of your questions as they challenge us to clarify the potential ambiguities in the new standards as we begin their implementation. Your questions also provide us with an opportunity to carefully reflect on the principles underlying all of the revisions and how each is a part of the larger picture of the psychoanalytic education we hope to provide all our candidates. As you know, the recent collaborative effort to revise our educational and training standards was not done with the intention of benefiting any individual analyst, candidate, or institute, but to strengthen our educational system as a whole. The long-term goal is to train more and more consistently competent psychoanalysts, and to prepare them to thrive in an increasingly challenging professional environment.
How then do we responsibly adhere to that spirit while waiving the letter of this policy? This is truly the challenge of this new waiver.
Here we will address the most frequently asked question regarding the waiver of the training analysis requirement: Why are there any parameters around who can conduct the analysis of a candidate in training? Broadly speaking, this question usually involves issues of professional eligibility, clinical immersion, and personal suitability, including the ethical good standing of the personal analyst. We must first keep in mind that any waiver already reflects a deviation from usual operating procedures. In the instance of a waiver of the training analysis requirement, it is always understood within the context of our explicitly stated commitment to a training and supervising analyst system in all our accredited institutes. This is clearly stated in the revised standards and is consistent with IPA requirements. The burden then falls on us to think through and to document the rationale for when and why we would deviate from our usual policy. While at first blush this may seem like a small detail, upon reflection it is a challenge to tease out and articulate the internal consistency of our own training philosophy, one which has professional, legal, and educational implications.
The creation of a waiver of the training analysis requirement was, in some circumstances, a needed and constructive compromise to an intractable impasse in our organization. This compromise was born out of the generally shared recognition that there are a number of highly qualified prospective candidates who have been in a personal analysis, usually for many years, who would rather forgo psychoanalytic training altogether than to switch to a training analyst. Even if relatively rare, this is a very real set of circumstances and one which the Board on Professional Standards ultimately believed warranted special consideration. At the same time, as educators, we bear the collective responsibility of ensuring an environment conducive to the development of a psychoanalytic process for our candidates as well as their supervised clinical cases. Expecting an analyst who is analyzing a candidate to have sufficient experience with the development and management of a psychoanalytic process as well as the termination of an analytic process reflects this responsibility. This is the rationale for the establishment of the training analyst system in the first place, since it involves a formal assessment of these qualifications, no matter how imperfect that system may be. How then do we responsibly adhere to that spirit while waiving the letter of this policy? This is truly the challenge of this new waiver.
This leads to a related frequently asked question: Are prospective candidates who are in psychotherapy with an analyst who is not a training analyst eligible to ask an institute to apply for this waiver? Simply put, this was not the intent of this waiver and reflects an erosion of the intended purpose. While all psychotherapeutic relationships are, hopefully, meaningful and significant, this is not synonymous with an analytic process. To equate the two minimizes the very education that we hope to bring through psychoanalytic training.
The guiding principle in considering these waiver requests must always be, what is in the best interest of the prospective candidate? While there is no doubt that a waiver of a training analysis may be of interest or benefit to the personal analyst and possibly the institute, this does not assure that it is
Colleen L. Carney, Ph.D., is chair of the Board on Professional Standards, and Lee I. Ascherman, M.D., is secretary.
ultimately in the best interest of the candidate. We have assumed that a candidate is better served by remaining in a personal analysis which falls outside the usual organizational and professional umbrella, but we do not at present have any clear data to support this. However, we are now taking steps to study this very important question, first through the development of this waiver and next, through a systematic study of this and other aspects of our training programs.
Our new standards require us to systematically study and produce data leading to informed changes to our evolving system of education. Through organized collaboration with our institutes and with the help of our BOPS science advisors, we plan to develop a method for data collection and its analysis. In the meantime, there are very specific things we can all do in this effort. The Committee on Institutes (COI) has the responsibility of establishing the guidelines for when these waivers should be granted. Individual institutes are asked to have clear policies and procedures in place to evaluate the suitability and eligibility of personal analysts. For each of us individually, there are some measures which we can take as psychoanalytic educators to create a healthy and nurturing environment for candidates:
Communicate clear, consistent, and accurate information to candidates and prospective candidates about what will be expected of them during their training.
Submit waiver applications to the COI early in the admissions process and prior to matriculation.
Do not have potential candidates for whom the institute has requested a waiver begin classes prior to approval of the requested waiver.
And by all means, keep the lines of communication open and the questions coming.