The exclusionary policies of 'us and them' in the IPA and psychoanalytic institutes

This article will explore the issues of otherness in the IPA and also consider the local institute level using the example of the British Psychoanalytic Society. According to the IPA it is 'The world's primary psychoanalytic accrediting and regulatory body, with 10,500 members in over forty-five countries. The IPA works in partnership with its Component Organizations to train, support and network psychoanalysts, developing clinical, educational and research programmes'. It is well-known that the history of psychoanalysis is replete with organizational schisms and primary issues of 'inclusion-exclusion'. Who is a real psychoanalyst? "That are the necessary acceptable professional 'standards'? 'While standards' should be derived from knowledge, they are often derived from power and are often really a mask for power-plays. The others' have included those from both outside and within the psychoanalytic movement. Outsiders include medicine and the universities, psychotherapists, other psychoanalysts and other disciplines. Deviationists ,.vithin the IPA include other schools vvithin the'broad church' of psychoanalysis or even just those who don't fit with the proclivities of those in power sometimes rationalized into issues of standards

The role of supervision in the training of a psychoanalyst

This paper discusses the role of clinical supervision in psychoanalytic training. It also discusses the impact of training modes on the psychoanalytic organisations that use these different models of training. The paper argues that psychoanalytic training consists of a unique combination of personal analysis, study of psychoanalytic theory and research and clinical supervision. Given the variation of these three components and their possible interactions, an overly prescriptive view of training can be detrimental and counterproductive. The effectiveness of psychoanalytic supervision is to a significant degree dependent upon a trainee being engaged in personal analysis. Clinical competency requires extensive clinical experience obtained in a variety of settings and with a broad exposure to patient groups. The detrimental implications of restrictive and reductive views on psychoanalytic training that seek to specify quantitative criteria rather than clearly articulate clinical competencies are discussed.

Supervisão psicanalítica : abordagem da contratransferência

Recente exame da literatura sobre a contratransferência e seus desenvolvimentos revela sua utilidade clínica em diferentes culturas psicanalíticas. No entanto, sobre sua abordagem na supervisão, mostra escassez de publicações. O objetivo deste estudo foi examinar os conceitos de transferência e contratransferência e como a contratransferência é abordada na supervisão, na formação de candidatos, em um instituto de psicanálise de uma sociedade filiada a International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). Realizou-se pesquisa qualitativa, entrevistando supervisores e supervisionandos. Através da análise de conteúdo, os dados foram transformados em categorias iniciais, intermediárias e finais. Os principais achados foram subdivididos em três categorias: os conceitos de transferência e contratransferência; a escuta psicanalítica e a complementaridade dos fenômenos e a abordagem da contratransferência. Os conceitos de transferência e de contratransferência predominantemente utilizados pelos entrevistados são baseados na visão totalística. A abordagem da contratransferência na supervisão vem sendo realizada de forma mais direta e objetiva quando comparada com período anterior, embora exista grande cuidado em delimitar os limites entre supervisão e análise pessoal. A finalidade principal é ampliar a compreensão e aprofundar as interpretações dirigidas ao paciente. Estes achados sugerem que a evolução do conceito de contratransferência em diferentes culturas psicanalíticas e os desenvolvimentos sobre campo analítico vêm contribuindo para esta mudança.

Subject in education : a psychoanalytic contribution to teacher training

Resumen basado en el de la publicación. Resumen en inglés

Training analysis : the shibboleth of psychoanalytic education

In this article the author focuses on training analysis as the catchword in psychoanalytic education. He states that psychologist Sigmund Freud suggested that dream interpretation was an important part in psychoanalysis. He focuses on the concept of Oedipus complex by Freud, which was considered the psychoanalytic catchword that distinguished supporters of psychoanalysis from their opponents.

The future of psychoanalytic institutes

The author contends that both conceptual and institutional problems permeate psychoanalytic institutes. Although institutional problems are historically based, they also derive from confusions around ill-defined concepts that lead to arbitrariness, authoritarianism, and the stifling of creativity. Psychoanalysis is a humanistic discipline that is touted as a science but is organized as a religion. Problems surrounding the right to train pervade psychoanalytic schisms, and transmission comes through processes of anointment. Institutional "false expertise" invokes the aura of anointment where training analysts pass down received truth through an esoteric pipeline depending on genealogy instead of function. Quasi-religious thinking and politics rush in to fill the gap between the level of claimed knowledge that affords qualification and the far lower level of real knowledge. Institutes should rely on evidence of candidates' performance and engage in open-ended inquiry

Unfree associations : inside psychoanalytic institutes

In an age of managed care and new biological therapies for mental illness, psychoanalysis is generally seen as a 'profession on the ropes' whose hour is up. What went wrong? While external factors have played their part in the fall of psychoanalysis, psychoanalysts have generally disregarded their own crucial role in creating this decline. This thesis examines this role as played out through their own institutions, the freestanding psychoanalytic institutes. Freud was an explorer but he also codified his ideas. His work has been taken as an inspiration to explore without presuppositions but also as Holy Writ. Psychoanalysis deals with emotions and excites passions. Like religion, psychoanalysis asks big questions, and, like religion, is easily influenced and seduced by dogmatic answers to these difficult questions. Psychoanalytic institutes have been notable as closed shops. Their solid walls have kept them sealed off and mysterious to the outside world, including the mental health professions and the academy. Authoritarian cliques, power struggles and intrigues have predominated inside the institutes. Institute life has been secret, the subject of rumour rather than knowledge. Insiders often know little about of other institutes (unless they are involved in site visits to particular institutes). Sometimes, insiders have a limited view of their own institutions because they see them through the vantage points of their own experience and that of some close colleagues. I have interviewed central participants of the dramas of the histories of some key psychoanalytic institutes in the US. For the first time, this thesis recounts the intricate inside history of these organizations. The thesis reveals the detailed inner political histories of arguably the four most important and varied psychoanalytic institutes affiliated with the APsaA. The New York Psychoanalytic Institute was the first and for decades the prestigious institute which set the model for many others. It became pre-eminent on a world scale with the immigration of leading European analysts fleeing the Nazis. The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute and the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute are quite varied in their organization and histories. The cultures are often quite different yet many of the problems will be found to be similar at base. I first examine the detailed political history of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute which provides a quintessential example of analytic anointment in practice, together with its pitfalls. I then examine a split that occurred in the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, which demonstrates some of the tensions and ambiguities that seem inherent in psychoanalytic organizations, especially where society and institute are part of the same institution. I move on to investigate a very different history in the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, which is quite differently organized: in Chicago, the institute with a lay Board of Trustees is quite separate from the society, and has for most of its history been headed by a powerful director. Then I look at the very complex history of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute which in the 1970s came very close to being closed down by the APsaA. The Los Angeles Institute history is especially colourful and informative, given the introduction of Kleinian and object relations ideas into the institute and the reactions to them. These histories provide dramatic insights into what psychoanalysts and their institutions have contributed to what has gone wrong with psychoanalysis from the basis of a critique. A major aspect of the problem, in my view, is that a basically humanistic discipline has conceived and touted itself as a positivist science while organizing itself institutionally as a religion. I argue that psychoanalysts approach psychoanalysis with an inappropriate paradigm, 'as if it were a science. Their systemic misconception of their own discipline, and the resultant, widespread creation of what Christopher Bollas calls a 'false expertise' contributes to their present-day decline. I argue that qualification from an institute assumes the transmission of a body of knowledge which has not really been established as knowledge. This presumed knowledge is then transmitted by means of anointment reminiscent of the Bible. There is no unified body of knowledge within the psychoanalytic field nor is there a unified practice that can be readily empirically tested. Therefore, by default, psychoanalytic education has become a process of anointment, transmission through a subjective process akin to consecration. The large gap between the small knowledge base of psychoanalysis and the high level of 'pretend' knowledge which is inculcated during training and upon which qualification is based entrench conditions which themselves make real knowledge in this complex field more and more difficult to attain. This argument has implications not only for psychoanalysis but for many other professions where knowledge and qualification have unrealistic and inappropriate bases.

A Comparison of Audio Recordings and Therapist's Process Notes in Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Therapistsʼ process notes - written descriptions of a session produced shortly afterwards from memory - hold a significant role in child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy. They are central in training, in supervision, and in developing oneʼs understanding through selfsupervision and forms of psychotherapy research. This thesis examines such process notes through a comparison with audio recordings of the same sessions. In so doing, it aims to generate theory that might illuminate the causes of significantly patterned discrepancies between the notes and recordings, in order to understand more about the processes at work in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and to explore the nature of process notes, their values and limitations. The literature searches conducted revealed limited relevant studies. All identified studies that compare process notes with recordings of sessions seek to quantify the differences between the two forms of recording. Unlike these, this thesis explores the meaning of the differences between process notes and recordings through qualitative data analysis. Using psychoanalytically informed grounded theory, in total nine sets of process notes and recordings from three different psychoanalytic psychotherapists are analysed. The analysis identifies eight core categories of findings. Initial theories are developed from these categories, most significantly concerning the role and influence of a ʻcore transference dynamicʼ between therapist and patient. Further theory is developed on the nature and function of process notes as a means for the therapistʼs conscious and unconscious processing of the session, as well as on the nature of the influence of the relationships – both internal and external – within which they are written. In the light of the findings, a proposal is made for a new approach for learning about the patient and clinical work, ʻthe comparison methodʼ (supervision involving a comparison of process notes and recordings), and, in particular, for its inclusion within the training of psychoanalytic psychotherapists. Further recommendations for research are also made.

A Best Practice Process for Fleet Safety Training

This paper outlines a process for fleet safety training based on research and management development programmes undertaken at the University of Huddersfield in the UK (www.hud.ac.uk/sas/trans/transnews.htm) and CARRS-Q in Australia (www.carrsq.qut.edu.au/staff/Murray.jsp) over the past 10 years.