The mission of the Department of Psychoanalytic Education (DPE) is to help us all think about and work better at the complex tasks of psychoanalytic education. The DPE will provide ongoing support and consultations to institutes; maintain and promote committees, study groups and workshops on the contemporary preparation of analytic candidates; promote interdisciplinary collaborations; and disseminate psychoanalytic ideas to the community at large.
The educational philosophy that underlies our vision for the DPE is based on our belief that psychoanalysis offers the most elegant model of the mind available at this point in the evolution of knowledge of human behavior. It is the only model that directly integrates models of the mind, development, pathogenesis and therapeutic action. We also think psychoanalysis is best served by grounding it in an interdisciplinary, scholarly framework wherein psychoanalytic knowledge is integrated with other relevant disciplines from both natural science, social science and the humanities.
Psychoanalytic education should be informed by and inform other disciplines, particularly those from which we draw candidates. That is, the evolution of our discipline includes both advances from within, based on new clinical experience, research and ideas, and from without via challenges to adapt its theory and practice to findings from these other disciplines. This integration is the one most likely to help our candidates adapt to changing social realities and to help all of us make psychoanalysis, once again, respectable in academia.
Finally, we believe psychoanalytic pedagogy is best served by an emphasis on psychoanalytic education being a lifelong process. Our experience is that it is both impossible and unwise for faculty and analytic candidates to assume they can learn everything important about psychoanalysis during their formal training years. Doing so only leaves blind spots and creates unrealistic ideals. Instead, we advocate an approach to formal training that stimulates excitement and the desire to continue learning throughout one’s career.
It is our hope that the DPE can operate as a large think tank to promote this sense of excitement about learning for both candidates and graduates from a perspective based on a commitment to creativity and flexibility in education, openness to new and competing ideas and an avoidance of authoritarianism. It is important that analysts think in a creative, open and flexible fashion; our educational goal should not be mere transmission of content that can be memorized or applied by rote. This approach has only slowed the development of our discipline by making shibboleths of certain ideas, models and ways of working, as well as approaches to training.
We believe APsaA is best served by an educational philosophy that presents the various ideas, research findings and models on the current scene and helps to train candidates to think in a rigorous and disciplined way about them. The emphasis is on thinking critically about the important differences among psychoanalytic thinkers and practitioners, and basing conclusions on evidence, not idealization and/or a wish to please certain teachers, supervisors or personal analysts. The DPE can facilitate this mission by sharing and disseminating new ideas and techniques to training centers and members of those centers.
Toward that end, the DPE will organize forums, study groups, conferences and the like. It will also develop an electronic repository of materials, lectures and ideas that all institutes, instructors, students and thinkers can draw upon. Its structure will involve a variety of sections that will help institutes integrate various areas important to contemporary psychoanalysis into their educational programs. These include child analysis, interdisciplinary studies, research, community applications, scholarship, diversity and others. But this focus will not be solely on content. An important aspect of the DPE’s mission will be studying pedagogy itself, how to teach and how to think about this important function of institutes. Styles of teaching, goals of training, types of curricula and help with common and unusual institute problems will be topics and services offered by the DPE. Because the DPE will not have oversight or regulatory responsibilities, all these areas and functions will be solely intended to promote and engage thinking about psychoanalytic education.
There are at present nine sections:
Training and Education is chaired by Richard Fritsch. The major purpose of this section is the dissemination of effective traditional and innovative educational and training practices, the creation of teaching and training resources, and support for innovation and experimentation. It also will serve as repository and clearing house for materials useful in psychoanalytic education.
Professional Development is chaired by Nancy Kulish. This section is devoted to postgraduate education, study groups and workshops on topics such as pedagogy.
Child Analysis is chaired by Karen Gilmore. Its emphasis is on best educational and training practices and support for innovation and experimentation within child analysis.
Interdisciplinary Relations, chaired by Jeffrey Prager, is devoted to psychoanalytic collaborations with disciplines in the humanities, the social sciences, the natural sciences and more.
Institute Advisory and Consultation, chaired by Jay Kwawer, focuses on topics such as consortiums for teaching, teaching via videoconferencing and recruitment of candidates. It will also offer voluntary consultation visits to institutes that request those services.
Research is chaired by Linda Goodman and Morris Eagle and will emphasize topics such as teaching how to collect and use clinical data.
Training for the Psychoanalyst in the Community, chaired by James Barron, emphasizes applied psychoanalysis in areas other than direct patient treatment, such as teaching in various settings, consulting to government agencies, businesses and other organizations.
Scholarship, chaired by Richard Tuch, focuses on teaching critical thinking, clinical evidence and writing, both clinical case writing and writing for publication.
Diversities is chaired by Anton Hart. The initiatives of this section include consultations with institutes on integrating issues of diversities into curricula, workshops on sensitivities to, for example, race, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity in clinical work, and development of resources of professional literature and syllabi.
The chairs of the sections, two candidates, Sarah Lusk and Oliver Stroeh, and we, as the DPE head and associate head, form the DPE Steering Committee.
The chairs of these sections are currently engaged in assembling committees to create what will be a vibrant and engaged network of educational and scholarly activities.
Complementing the groups above is a Psychoanalytic Education and Training Forum, which we will chair. Each approved APsaA institute will elect a representative to this forum. We plan regional meetings and visits to institutes for dissemination of “effective traditional and innovative practices,” making available the “products” of research and study groups, as well as assistance with problem solving, where desired.
The Psychoanalytic Scholarship Forum (PSF) is currently being developed as an arena for the presentation and discussion of ideas that can expand our thinking into realms not usually considered in our discourse that could have an important bearing on psychoanalytic education. Erik Gann is chair of this forum. There will be more to say about this activity in the near future. As of now, the kick-off session of the PSF is planned for the next winter meetings in New York.
We have been asked about potential conflicts between DPE and the Association of American Psychoanalytic Education (AAPE). We want to emphasize that we see no conflict and no competition between these two groups. DPE is one of seven departments within APsaA and it is entirely educational and consultatory. All approved institutes of APsaA are automatically members of the DPE, thus any institute having joined AAPE will still be fully included in all the educational and consultative services offered by DPE.
No mandates will come from the DPE. Our mission is to help all of us to think and work better at the complex task of psychoanalytic education. As a result, we will always welcome input and suggestions. None of our ideas or structures is cast in stone. We hope they will always be changing in order to be most useful. And we want to be as inclusive and collaborative as possible. All perspectives will always be welcome and we will strive to avoid thinking in terms of “correct” or “incorrect” ideas. Rather, we want ideas to be critically discussed with a focus on advantages and disadvantages, not correctness or incorrectness.
No mandates will come from the DPE. Our mission is to help all of us to think and work better at the complex task of psychoanalytic education…. we will always welcome input and suggestions.
In keeping with this plan, we would like you to feel free to communicate to either or both of us your ideas, concerns or plans about this new department. We can succeed only if everyone feels free to be involved and to state what they believe without fearing dismissal or devaluation. Respectful disagreement, of course, is something we expect and desire throughout the many functions and structures of the department. But the key word will always be “respectful.”
Our plan for the DPE is that it will offer all the same services and oversight to institutes that BOPS did, with the caveat that these services will be facilitative and advisory, not regulatory or mandatory. Of course, there will continue to be educational standards mandated by APsaA; they will be those of the IPA per the Six Point Plan. Institutes will be free to add to these standards as part of local option. Local option means that any institute can choose to use current BOPS standards, and that the DPE will be just as willing to oversee, advise and consult to those institutes as to those that want to use the baseline IPA standards.
The position of the DPE is that the most productive approach to conflicts over standards within local training programs is to have open and non-adversarial discussion of the reasoning of different local camps, as well as thoughtful consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of each approach to standards. This approach is much more likely to lead to conciliation and compromise than a mandate from above. It is also more likely to lead to disciplined evaluation of the standards and replace idealization and identification that may well have been the basis for them. Just as we believe clinical standards are likely to be most helpful if based on solid clinical evidence, we believe educational standards are likely to be most helpful if based on actual evidence of their utility. In our vision, the DPE is particularly suited to help institutes deal with these sorts of internal conflicts because its lack of regulatory or mandating function allows it to be neutral. In fact, the entire topic of how aggression and conflict are handled in institutes is an area the DPE plans to study.
Again, we invite each of you to contact either or both of us with your ideas, concerns or plans about our new Department of Psychoanalytic Education: Alan Sugarman at and Britt-Marie Schiller at . We can only succeed if everyone feels free to be involved.
From the Issues in Psychoanalytic Education Editor
“It is our hope that the DPE can operate as a large think tank to promote this sense of excitement about learning for both candidates and graduates.”
The article by Alan Sugarman, the DPE head, and Britt-Marie Schiller, associate head, is the first communication in TAP from the Department of Psychoanalytic Education (DPE) as an up and running new entity. The readers can see that the DPE comprises several sections, each dedicated to a particular aspect of educational import, that come together into a richly envisioned design of open and vigorous collegial exchange.
Anticipating this inauguration, the previous issue of TAP featured an article by Ellen Rees on the importance of teaching critical thinking. We look forward to other contributions fueled by the innovative work in the different sections of DPE.
It is worthy of notice that the appointment of Alan Sugarman, child analyst, and Britt-Marie Schiller makes good on the intent of bringing together the insights of child and adult psychoanalytic theorizing and practice into the educational whole of the department’s mission.
—Luba Kessler