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The training analysis at a time when theory is in short supply
The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis
|March 10, 2001
Summary
Psychoanalytic training risks stagnation when original theory production is absent. Current training often transmits doctrines, not discovery methods, hindering unconscious exploration and critical thinking in psychoanalysis.
Area of Science:
- Psychoanalysis
- Psychology
- Psychotherapy Training
Background:
- Little progress in establishing a general science of the psyche since Freud.
- Transmission of psychoanalytic knowledge focuses on doctrines rather than Freud's discovery method.
- Current training risks applying theories instead of discovering the unconscious.
Purpose of the Study:
- To discuss the risks of lacking original theoretical production in psychoanalytic training analysis.
- To examine how doctrines replace theory, hindering psychoanalytic discovery.
- To illustrate the impact of training analysis on the assimilation of psychoanalytic knowledge.
Main Methods:
- Conceptual analysis of psychoanalytic training and theory transmission.
- Description of common interpretational aberrations in psychoanalytic practice.
- Application of the author's concept of the 'reality-providing circuit'.
Main Results:
- Psychoanalytic training analysis can transmit doctrines as psychic fact, rather than discovery methods.
- The use of doctrines as metaphors can have a powerful suggestive effect on patients.
- Training analysis, reinforced by didactic teaching, can lead to uncritical assimilation of theory.
Conclusions:
- The degeneration of theories into doctrines in psychoanalysis poses significant risks to training.
- Psychoanalytic training analysis itself may become the de facto theory of training.
- A lack of original theoretical production impedes the advancement of psychoanalytic science.