The ambiguity of confidentiality in a psychoanalytic institute

Traditionally, psychoanalytic training institutes have used the knowledge which faculty gained in the psychoanalyses of their student patients to evaluate the progress of those students. The training institute that we shall call Eastern Institute regarded such a practice as unacceptable, and organized its program with the intention that analysis would exercise no power over their student patients' careers. The institute's commitment to the confidentiality of psychoanalytic relationships led to an ambiguous definition of confidentiality. This ambiguity meant that some faculty members violated the confidentiality of the analytic relationship even though they believed thye were sustaining it. This paper examines the ways in which confidential information was managed, the conditions under which it was compromised, and the significance of this paradoxical situation in the life of the Institute and in the wider psychoanalytic world.