Fundamental to psychoanalytic training is a personal psychoanalysis (“training analysis”). Personal analysis provides the Candidate with the experience of undergoing psychoanalysis, and supports the development of character stability, openness, flexibility, and maturity. It helps the Candidate establish a psychoanalytic identity, and strengthens their capacities for self-observation, self-reflection, and ultimately, ongoing self-analysis, which are necessary in maintaining a psychoanalytic stance, including creative openness to what the analyst learns and experiences. These achievements are essential if the future analyst is to be sufficiently free from neurotic conflicts and personality problems that might interfere with the treatment of patients.
Requirements
The personal analysis must be undertaken at a frequency of at least four times per week with:
- a SPSI faculty member designated as an Analyst of Candidates,
- a non-SPSI analyst who has been designated as an Analyst of Candidates at their home institute (at other institutes the designation “Training Analyst” is sometimes used), or
- a psychoanalyst who has graduated from an APsA- or IPA-affiliated institute (or a substantially equivalent one), has at least five years of post-graduation experience conducting psychoanalysis, and is in good legal standing as a licensed
Newly-accepted Candidates are strongly encouraged to begin their personal analysis before beginning didactic courses, and are expected to be in analysis shortly after beginning didactic courses. Candidates must be in their personal analysis for at least six months before requesting permission to start a psychoanalytic training case under consultation.
An overlap of at least six months of personal analysis with the Candidate’s treatment of supervised psychoanalytic cases is required. Optimally, the personal analysis will continue throughout the Candidate’s training, and should be ongoing as the Candidate conducts advanced work with their training cases. There is no requirement as to the duration of the personal analysis, and it need not be completed before graduation.