[Critical comment on Helmut Thomä's essay on "Idea and reality in teaching analysis]

H. Thomä's reformist ideas about training analysis are controversial. Beland reproaches Thomä for his insinuation that national as well as international training institutions for psychoanalysis supposedly have quantitative rather than qualitative motivations for increasing the length of training analyses--after the motto "the longer, the better". Against that the author claims that a future analyst, in order to qualify, has to become aware of the defenses against his fears of annihilation and loss. This goal cannot be reached in 300-400 sessions. He argues that the training institutions' artificial restriction on the length of analysis would influence the training analyst's analytical attitude negatively and would expose the candidate to institutional violence.