Part Six: Epilogue

For a long time, it baffled me as a training analyst, that we were- in Canada- unsatisfied with our training system, but we only tinkered with some of its details, which did not satisfy us either. This was also the situation in most of the training institutions in the different parts of the world, as our colleagues acknowledged in personal communication and in the biannual pre-congress meetings of the IPA. My bafflement dissipated gradually when I discovered -in myself too- that we are attached to a system of training that we inherited, because it fitted well the closed community of psychoanalysts, which we cherished blindly. Opening up our closed community would have required changing our system of qualifying psychoanalysts and giving up the desire to keep it closed. Changing the system of training would have resulted in opening up our analytic community to others (none clinical psychoanalysts). Dr. Kernberg, who was and still is critical of our training system says: “I believe that the educational stagnation…of psychoanalytic education derives largely from the present-day training analysis system as a major source of inhibition of the educational process (Division Review, Autumn 2016,13). He mentions as one of the factors in the resistance to change isolating the institutes from the scientific and academic fields, thus all the elements that contribute to training remain within the closed circle of psychoanalysts who assume all these responsibilities. He is more open to some changes in the present situation but does not see more than ameliorating what has been the cornerstone of the Institute System. However, Kernberg offers a view of an model institute of the future; an institute that does not exist yet.

He recommends four main things to ameliorate training as conducted now- a-days:

1.    Establishing objective assessment methods of competency regarding the candidates’ theoretical knowledge, acquisition of technical expertise and developing a psychoanalytic attitude (creating a speciality Board for that purpose). He stipulates theoretical knowledge as an amalgam of some of the familiar concepts- though fundamental- in the literature, like motivation, structure, development, the spectrum of defense mechanisms, etc.  (ibid,14). This amalgamation of concepts does not indicate a strong theoretical base. I had candidates who knew all those concepts, in addition to the improvised concepts of the new schools without understanding them or differentiating between knowing concepts and developing a theoretical stance.  He considered technical expertise the intuitive understanding of the material, formulating notions about understanding such analytic material and giving them appropriate interpretations. I also had candidates who were gifted in that regard but inappropriate in the timing or the verbal expression of their understanding (supervision has little input in teaching those subtleties). The aspect of the psychoanalytic attitude is not clarified in Kernberg’s paper, but in my opinion the most determining factor in that respect is the analyst’s character. In training, we discover the future psychoanalysts but we do make of the candidate the psychoanalyst of the future.

2.    The supervisory functions in the new system would be separate from certifying the candidates. The supervisory function would be responsible for evaluating the training faculty based on measures of productivity and creativity and other features of skill and distinction. With tongue-in-cheek, Kernberg sees some advantage in connecting with the university departments of psychology, psychiatry and the university centres of psychoanalysis, in that regard. He realises that the institutes-unsupported by the academics of psychoanalysis and the human sciences- would not survive long.

3.    The key point in his proposal is RESEARCH. He considers research as a vital part of any future training modality; even proposes creating a department of research in every training institute. Kernberg is not careful in using this term. Researcher is an act of deciding what is right, proven, categorically different from other things, quantitively measurable, and most importantly misunderstood because of being undifferentiated from other aspects of the phenomena that are implicitly mixed with the subject of the research. It also depends on the experimental model to examine the hypotheses. What Kernberg calls research is just attempts at using quantifying measuring scales to allow methodical description of purely subjective conceptions. The two examples he gives (suggested by Tuckett and Korner) show the distinction I mentioned here. Research is not the solution to problems but the topic to be researched is the problem; it has to be solved by defining it within a research hypothesis first, before it is researched. 

4.    Adding to the curricula the literature of other psychoanalysts beside Freud and the legendary characters in our traditions (which is actually done but maybe less that what Kernberg would like). He also suggests teaching issues like the recent the neuropsychological findings, principle of experimental psychology, developmental psychology, etc.  As a psychologist who studied those subjects academically, and practiced some and wrote about most of them in addition be being a training faculty in an active institute (in my time) I have to think seriously: how could we include all those things in the curricula of an institute that requires three hours a week for seminars, four hours a week (at least) of personal analysis, three more hours of supervision in addition to at least fifteen hours of psychoanalytic work with supervised patients,  and earn a living at the same time. Dr. Kernberg’s proposal is about an ideal system of training that cannot be sustained in the present institute system of training. This if we want psychoanalysis to become a profession in its own right.

Fifty years ago, all what was known about the human subject was easy to condense in the institutes’ curricula. What is presently done in our training institutes is less than what is required in an undergraduate degree in the subject of psychoanalysis (B.A. in psychoanalysis). A regular clinical psychotherapist, who wants to do psychoanalytical psychotherapy needs two or three more years of core psychoanalysis at the level of a curriculum of a M.A. (in psychoanalysis). To qualify for psychoanalysis the candidate needs either a higher Diploma in clinical psychoanalysis or a Ph.D. in psychoanalysis. This is the way to approach education in psychoanalysis; examining the field, the minimum requirement for each level of practice, matching the requirement to the demand of competence. Somethings similar have to be done for none clinical psychoanalysis [which is imperative if we want clinical psychoanalysis to survive and flourish]. But that should be mainly done by the academicians of the related human sciences.

My basic idea about training is to phase out the training institutes sponsored by the local, national and international psychoanalytic societies and move training to the academic domain. I would not have written a better post or paper to support my views than Dr. Kernberg’s paper. It is uncanny that he is proposing innovations in the education of psychoanalysis, which would be easy and natural to execute in universities without reservations, and meet more than what stipulated as measures for success.

The obstacle in accepting this point of view is the chronic pride of the clinical psychoanalysts (it is also called narcissism). They want to be the authority of certifying themselves, forgetting that they are initially certified by their original profession to practice; being it psychoanalysis or something else. Psychoanalytic certification of the title “psychoanalyst” is only important to the certified psychoanalysts, but not to anyone else. However, a university degree in psychoanalysis is something else.

I will be posting a new long post on missing a central point in the nature of psychoanalysis, which created the chronic (false!) pride of the clinical psychoanalyst, and was always the undeclared reason for the chronic conflicts in the psychoanalytic organizations.