The Training Analyst: Analyst, Teacher, Mentor

Abstract

Although the literature has stressed that the training analysis should be identical to a nontraining “therapeutic analysis,” it was hypothesized that differences do exist between the two, particularly with respect to educational aims. Candidates at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research were sent anonymous questionnaires and asked to identify aims they felt were being achieved in the training analysis and to identify certain types of interventions that their training analyst made. Most candidates reported that widely accepted goals of the training analysis, such as promoting understanding of countertransference reactions, were being met in their analysis. Many also endorsed didactic and educational goals. Almost all reported using their analyst's technique to some degree as a model for their own. Most notably, a significant minority of candidates reported that their analyst made interventions that appeared to have a primarily didactic, supervisory, or mentoring purpose. The implications of these findings for an understanding of the role of the personal analysis in psychoanalytic education are discussed.