Being a Candidate: Its Impact On Analytic Process

Abstract

Despite its crucial importance to psychoanalytic training, the control analysis has received surprisingly little scrutiny by psychoanalytic writers. How the candidate's training influences analytic process— a critical feature of the control analysis—is examined. In keeping with previous contributions, it is found that the candidate's training experience does indeed influence analytic process. It is argued, however, that focusing on the influence of training itself, as some authors have done, moves discussion away from the meanings of training for each candidate and from how these meanings bear on the interplay of transference and countertransference in the control analysis. Detailed case examples illustrate how one candidate's experience of training was drawn into his control analyses in the form of enactments, supporting the conclusion that attention to the particular ways in which training influences each candidate's analytic work is critical to the candidate's psychoanalytic education.