Process II and Ethics

Second Year Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2022-23, 2nd Trimester — Fridays, 1:45-3:15pm
Diane Wolman, MSW

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December 9, 2022 — On Being a Student (Again!)

[55 pages]

The reasons that brought you to analysis help you to understand why your patients are considering analysis and what their hopes and concerns might be.  During this session we will explore the impact of being a student on the analytic process and how it may contribute to ethical dilemmas. You and your patients must tolerate the “extraordinary pain and narcissistic injury of learning to do something new.” We will consider the pressures that come to bear on the student and how to navigate the desire to impress consultants and teachers with our obligations to our patients. Erlich asserts that while analysts always have to contend with the external pressures in their lives at every stage of our careers, that being an analyst in training does bring unique pressures to bear on the analytic dyad.

Please come to class prepared to discuss the following:

1. Any thoughts or concerns you are currently having or have had in the past regarding the pressures to “perform” and how they impact your relationships with your patients.
2. Your thoughts and or concerns about balancing your patients’ rights to confidentiality with the obligations of being a student and to the profession of psychoanalysis.

Erlich, J. (2003). Being a Candidate: Its Impact on Analytic Process. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 51: 177-200.

Bonovitz, C.F. (2016) The Influence of Personal Analysis on the Analyst’s Clinical Style: Idealization, identification, and the Process of Individuation, Contemporary Psychoanalysis,52(2): 224-248.

Levine, H.B. (2017) Psychoanalytic Professional Ethics and Patient Confidentiality. Psychoanalytic Discourse, (4) 1-6.