Basic to psychoanalytic training is a personal psychoanalysis with a “Training Analyst.” Training Analysts are certified by the American Psychoanalytic Association and have been further vetted by SPSI faculty as qualified to analyze psychoanalytic trainees.
Associates are expected to begin training analysis at least six months after beginning didactic courses.
Training analysis helps the Associate establish a psychoanalytic identity and achieve a greater degree of character stability, openness, flexibility, and self-reflection, all necessary in conducting psychoanalytic treatment.
Training Analysis provides the Associate with the experience of undergoing psychoanalysis, and ultimately, teaches self-analysis, which is necessary to maintain a basic psychoanalytic stance. These achievements are essential if the future analyst is to be sufficiently free from neurotic conflicts and personality problems which might interfere with the treatment of patients.
Training Analysis for Child Program Associates
Training Analysis is particularly important for Child Analyst trainees who must handle special challenges unique to work with children and adolescents. Children press for gratification or encourage boundary violations in ways that differ from adult patients. Because of this, the analysis of children often arouses unconscious conflicts within the analyst in unexpected, unpredictable, and unsettling ways. Working with parents of children also presents many countertransference challenges.
Therapeutic psychoanalysis prior to psychoanalytic training does not waive the requirement for Training Analysis. Associates in the Child and Adolescent Training Program must be in analysis during a significant portion of their child training.
Requirements
Newly accepted Associates are expected to begin training analysis at least six months after beginning didactic courses and before taking a training case. If the training analysis is not begun within one year of acceptance, the Progression Committee may reconsider the person’s eligibility to proceed with training.
An overlap of at least six months of training analysis with the student’s treatment of supervised psychoanalytic cases is required. There is no requirement as to the duration of the training analysis, and it need not be completed before graduation.