Combined Training of Candidates, Scholars, And Psychotherapists: A Model of Psychoanalytic Education for the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

A new model of psychoanalytic education is proposed that will meet the challenges of educating candidates in a new century. Prospective candidates have varying opinions about the value of analytic training, opinions that reflect economic and cultural conditions different from those facing previous generations. Overall, today’s graduate-level students hold less favorable attitudes toward psychoanalysis than did their counterparts in the past. The proposed model calls for combining analytic candidates, psychotherapy students, and academic scholars for two years in a Psychoanalytic Studies Program (PSP), after which candidates take their subsequent years of training in a cohort made up exclusively of analytic candidates. A curriculum that focuses on the core concepts in psychoanalysis allows students in all three categories to learn the foundational knowledge of psychoanalysis that once was widely taught in graduate mental health programs. The philosophy that underlies the model and the structure and orientation of the course sequences are presented. Implementatiion of the model having shown positive results, its strengths and limitations are evaluated against the traditional model, in which candidates and psychotherapy students are educated separately.