To Be or Not to Be a Psychoanalyst—How Do We Know a Candidate Is Ready to Qualify? Difficulties and Controversies in Evaluating Psychoanalytic Competence

Abstract

What constitutes competent psychoanalytic work, what criteria are used to evaluate psychoanalytic competence and how can we exchange about these matters among colleagues of different psychoanalytic orientations? These are the core questions investigated in an ongoing project of the European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF) Working Party on Education (WPE). This article reports on several group discussions at EPF conferences over 4 successive years. Findings reveal a great interest in discussing the question of evaluation on one hand, but bringing up uneasiness and anxiety on the other, followed by a tendency to bypass saying “no” to not enough competent clinical work.

Notes

¹For example, one presenter expressed his way of experiencing this WPE day like this: “I enjoyed very much the participation in a group, of very friendly and constructive colleagues. As I presented a difficult supervisory process I gained (a) very helpful support, (b) some clearly formulated hints on how to deal with the specific difficulties inherent to this supervisory work. … I got some new perspectives upon the supervisory process, especially in regard to the relation between the transference in the analysis and the reduplication of this transference in the supervisory process. … A focus of investigation could be the interrelating influence of the training analysis and the supervisory process.”