Psychoanalytic Training: The “Faculty System”

Abstract

The primary and ideal version of the task faced by training institutes is simple: to help aspiring candidates become competent. Candidates receive assistance in developing their knowledge and skills as practitioners. But to look at training more closely is to see a far more complex set of demands and expectations. Indeed, training as it is actually conducted in most institutes can easily seem inconsistent, contradictory, and, at times, self-defeating. Moreover, in the golden age of psychoanalysis, training was considerably more haphazard and casual than it has become, but our efforts to become more systematic and thoughtful about training coincide with a general decline in our level of originality. Why has training, the development of competence, seemingly so clear and simple a task, become so complex and confusing?