A mixed-model for psychoanalytic education^*

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Psychoanalysis and the University panel at the International Psychoanalytic Association Congress, July 26–29, 2015, Boston ,USA.

Abstract

If psychoanalysis is to avoid total marginalization, something has to be changed in the way future generations are prepared for working with patients and doing research. Reformation of psychoanalytic education may easily be the crucial issue when it comes to the survival of psychoanalysis. Its current organizational scheme has been criticized for various reasons, and various models of its structure have been proposed. I advocate a model that would combine the best features of the university education (training in clinical skills together with philosophy of science and research methodology) with personal analysis as part of psychoanalytic institutes. Although universities can remedy some of the problems of psychoanalytic institutions, they cannot contain the subjective experience of being analyzed.

Key words:

• psychoanalytic training
• educational models
• psychoanalytic candidates
• outcome research
• wounded healer

Notes

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Psychoanalysis and the University panel at the International Psychoanalytic Association Congress, July 26–29, 2015, Boston ,USA.

1 I admire Dr. Kernberg’s audacity to open this issue. It has been addressed elsewhere (see, for instance, Ward, 1993), but not in relation to psychoanalytic education.

2 We have to thank Martin Bergmann for facing the issue of dissociation in the history of psychoanalysis. It is quite telling that this happened about 110 years after first psychoanalytic publications.

3 One can only wonder why we still do not have a study of psychoanalytic institutes similar in methodology to Erving Goffman’s studies of asylums (1961). Goffman pretended he had been an employee of a psychiatric hospital, while he was in fact collecting material for a study on total institutions; one may imagine that sooner or later someone will enter psychoanalytic training with the sole purpose of writing a study of its social structure.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aleksandar Dimitrijević

Aleksandar Dimitrijević, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. He is an interim professor at the International Psychoanalytic University. He graduated from Belgrade Psychoanalytical Society and is member of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). He is also faculty member of the Serbian Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists (EFPP). He has published about 50 journal papers and book chapters in Serbian and English, some of which have been translated into German, Hungarian, Italian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Turkish. He has edited or co-edited 10 books and is currently working on a textbook of psychotherapy (with Professor Ljubomir Eric; in Serbian) and “Ferenczi's influence on contemporary psychoanalytic traditions” (with Drs. Gabriele Cassullo and Jay Frankel; Karnac Books).