Given the proliferation of interest in training programs in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in it would be seem to worth our efforts to consider the history of this endeavor and place it in historical context.
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy must have been practiced without necessarily being-so-named from the earliest days of the psychoanalytic era. It might be well to acknowledge that we are discussing preparation for what has been come to be known as “an impossible profession,” the practice of which encompasses not only the infinite vagaries of the human mind but also the fact that our own psychology and personality are so much involved in the pursuit of our technical tasks. The integration of the knowledge and skills acquired during training demands a long period of seasoning. The best-planned and organized program cannot preempt the new learning that comes from experience.
What we call psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a treatment based upon psychoanalytic principles but differs in some necessary but nonessential respects (I recognize an entire paper could based upon this last sentence but that is a tale for another time). Conceived in this manner we very well might use the early history of psychoanalysis itself as also being the history of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and note that at what point the self-conscious emergence of psychoanalytic psychotherapy developed as a parallel process.
The weight of the past is a heavy burden on current trends in training. It could be argued that psychoanalytic education rests on a philosophy and set of practices inherited from its earliest days (within this sentence we also could envision a lengthy and perhaps heated dialogue among those who currently occupy the psychoanalytic playing field).The late Jacob Arlow shared with me the tale of Therese Benedek once telling him how in Vienna, during the pristine days of psychoanalysis, the largest amount of learning took place at the coffee tables of the most popular cafes. The candidates-in-training would wait patiently for the next paper by Freud to make its appearance and when it finally saw the light of day they would discuss it thoroughly. She said “He was our Prometheus. He brought us the fire from the gods.” Now that was a curriculum!
What the programs are hopefully inculcating is an ability to learn that there is a method that is peculiar to the psychodynamically-informed process. There is both an art and a science that the gifted analytic instructor conveys-witness the recent entry on the Blog of Jane Hall’s interview with Martin Bergmann.
Of equal importance is how does psychoanalytic therapy work? When is it effective, is it because of understanding or because of a special relationship to a special person. All the fire and fury that we saw posted on our Blog regarding In Treatment graphically speaks to this concern. Only a methodically precise examination of the clinical data (i.e., process notes as opposed to case histories) can serve as the base upon which such issues stand any chance of receiving even a modicum of resolution.
It becomes a matter of the utmost significance, therefore, for our future clinician to be able to judge which observational theories are relevant and valid. A consistent syllabus, starting with infant observation and proceeding through the development of self and object differentiation, the crystallization of psychic structure, the organization of the drives, together with consideration of all functions that have been relatively neglected, such as the development of language, thinking processes, and intellectual development in general, is not realized as often as it needs to be. These programs need, and hopefully will, consider the process of educability and the influence of social forces. Matters of character formation, personal identity, and moral imperatives remain dynamically significant well past the so-called resolution of the oedipal conflicts. I would emphasize that critical is an understanding of the human individual, its normal and pathological potential, all considered in the spirit of the basic psychoanalytic principles of determinism, dynamics, topography, and genetics.
These newly evolving psychotherapy programs must take a careful look at where we stand in the development of our evolving discipline. The coming generation of practitioners must be supplied with the appropriate conceptual and methodological instruments to enhance our common goal of advancing analytically-informed work. This gains in importance because we are being attacked on so many fronts,
Sheldon M. Goodman, Ph.D.
Sheldon M. Goodman, Ph.D.
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