Addendum

I think I was misunderstood when I said that the IPA certifies us. I meant certifies us as psychoanalysts, because I know that IPA recognises and accepts to membership only the graduates of its accredited institutes. In Canada, one has to finish training successfully for the Training Committee to present him for election to the society. Getting elected is the only way to become member of the local society. This membership gets the new comer his membership in the IPA. Certification for the practice of psychoanalysis is an administrative issue and is based on the academic education of the practitioner, and if it meets the local and national standards of the mental health providers.

The reason I mention that distinction is that the surge of academic institutions that educate and train people in psychotherapy that is firmly based on psychoanalytic principles (mainly European) exceeded the standards of the IPA training system. Academia has more facilities, experience, potential, let alone the freedom to do what is necessary to bring their students the best of psychoanalysis and discard what is dated without the narcissistic adulation of everything ‘classical’. The IPA with its training system, concepts of what is psychoanalytic and what is not, lacks the cultural perspective of psychoanalysis. It only train in psychotherapy. It has a low level of tolerance to change. The academic expansion of psychoanalysis is inevitable and is enriching it. The coexistence of the IPA as an educational resource create harmful confusion.