ETHICAL FLAWS IN TRAINING ANALYSIS

With the spread of Freud's psychoanalytic movement, in numbers as well as in ideas, there came a time when what used to be informal "training," in the course of peripatetic or brief analyses with the master, was bureaucratized as a tripartite training system consisting of training analysis, didactic instruction, and analytic work under supervision. This was codified in the first official psychoanalytic institute, established in Berlin, that superseded the earlier tradition of Freud's Vienna. This development created a perennial tension between the goals of training and of treatment, with blurring of boundaries and creation of insurmountable ethical conflicts. The crux of the conflict is that the vested interests of the training analyst hamper the spirit of a good-enough treatment analysis: freedom of choice, suitable analysand-analyst fit, and more. This article is an analysis of these ethical conflicts and a plea for reform.