The Potenial Repressive Power of Defining Models of Education, An Op-Ed Piece by Jurgen Reeder
In this lastest op ed piece, Jurgen Reeder, author of Hate and Love in Psychoanalytic Institututions the dilemma of the profession, gives us his thoughts about the three models of training sanctioned by the IPA and makes a good argument for less rigidity and more flexibility. Psychoanalytic education is not thriving, as we all know, and I am grateful that Dr. Reeder is keeping this important topic in the forefront of our minds.
–Jane S. Hall, Website OpEd Editor
Click Here to Read: The Potenial Repressive Power of Defining Models of Education, An Op-Ed Piece by Jurgen Reeder.
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August 6th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Comment From PMW
The January 2008 “mandate” of the IPA “Education and Oversight Committee” is here:
http://www.ipa.org.uk/docs/Education%20&%20Oversight%20Committee%20Mandate.doc
It’s only my personal opinion but I think the entire business about “coherent training models” is a political cover-up which has been employed as a face-saving maneuver within IPA to deal with the fact that the IPA “standards” have seriously eroded as they are carried out in various places around the world — and that there is damn little the IPA can actually do to stop that from happening. Coming up with the “three training models” stuff is a cleverconstruct but it is all rationalization!
By locking the Eitingon “model” into certain countries where it now exists, and making the TA system and the 4-5x per week stuff part of that model, the IPA has tried to “firewall” the non-TA countries, and places where three times a week treatment is now being done within training programs, so they can’t contaminate the bastions of the standards of yesteryear (like here.)
I refer you to a TAP piece on the “three models” which can be found in TAP 41(2) p. 11 at the address: http://www.apsa.org/Portals/1/docs/TAP/vol41no2.pdf Also note that the IPA document on TA appointments says: “1. The requirements in this document are intended to guide Constituent Organisations or Institutes which are specifically charged with the responsibilities of training, qualifying and granting membership to individuals.
This includes selection of those to whom the function of Training Analyst is to be granted. The IPA recognises that some Constituent Organisations or Institutes do not appoint Training Analysts. The requirements in this document thus only apply where Constituent Organisations or Institutes choose to appoint Training Analysts.”
http://www.ipa.org.uk/docs/3.%20Training%20Analysts%20%20ITA%20FINAL%20Mar%2007.doc
In my July 30 note on the Members’ list also described a (fourth?) training model which is now in use in Switzerland. Contrary to what Reeder says, that model seems to be a variation on the French model rather than a wholesale adoption of the French model, but I don’t know enough details to be sure about that.
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Who appoints the “Education and Oversight Committee?” (Destined to be our new “International BOPS” ???)
From IPA “Procedure Code: Committee Appointments
3. Under the 2001 Constitution and Byelaws of the IPA, Article 8, Section A (1)(ii), ‘the President appoints the personnel of IPA Committees, task forces and other special IPA bodies in consultation with (and subject to rejection by) the Board’. Board members should normally not be Chairs of Committees although they may be ordinary members. Additionally Board members should not be members of any International New Groups Committee.
4. The President may, but is not obliged, to consult Committee Chairs and Co-Chairs as to the membership of Committees. Committee Chairs and Co-Chairs do not appoint members of Committees and any questions to do with new appointments should be discussed with the President before discussing such matters with any prospective appointees. The President may require a member of a Committee to stand down at any time without citing a reason for this action.
5. Appointments to IPA Committees are confirmed in writing by the President or Central Office. Copies of these letters are sent to the Central
Office, Membership Secretary, who maintains the list of IPA Committees and their current membership. Appointees are required to send notice of their acceptance of appointment by post, fax or email to the President with a copy to Central Office. The IPA’s biennial Roster includes a list of the IPA’s Committees, Task Forces and other special IPA bodies. The current list is also published on the IPA’s website. Central Office can additionally provide members with a current list of IPA Committees at any time.
6. As and when persons cease to be members of Committees, they receive letters of thanks from the President or Central Office.
August 6th, 2008 at 7:17 am
From Jane Hall:
I would like to see a ‘think tank’ with one or two members of every psychoanalytic group, including non IPA and non APsaA group representation. The future of psychoanalysis is at stake and we people over 60 can’t seem to see beyond our differences. Medical schools, psychology schools, social work schools that grant degrees are strongly opposed to psychodynamic thinking let alone psychoanalytic thought and it is likely that graduates will have not been exposed to Freud even once.
Who will be coming to learn psychoanalysis in 20 years? Or even in 10 years? Certain groups that we don’t pay any attention are attracting 30 and more students - lay people who are not jaded but enthusiastic.
The American is but one group and its slow rate of change, tho more impressive recently, bodes poorly for the future. Internal battles drain all energy.
Is it a pipe dream to ask all who call themselves psychoanalysts to join together, to come up with a plan that will save our bodies of knowledge and even let go of some antiquated theories?
Most of you will scoff, saying that we can’t even get together in the American. That may be true - but how about going beyond the small groups. If we psychoanalytic thinkers, with our knowledge of neurosis and perversion can’t rise above our politics and power needs, we will break off the polar icecap, and melt. If this happens, maybe our theories are for naught.
How many psychoanalysts are truly doing the IPA version of analysis? Let’s face the music - which in my mind sounds like a funeral march. Is it even possible that psychoanalysis ala bops died a long time ago and we denied and therefore did not mourn. Only mourning can make way for a creative kind of growth. How much time have we wasted already? We need a vision - and we don’t have an Obama.
Jane Hall
August 6th, 2008 at 7:19 am
Comment From Alexandra Rolde:
Dear Jane (Hall), Lana, Ralph, Paul, Arnie, et al
despite the fact that I always feel that psychoanalysis is alive and well in my office and in the offices of friends of mine, I have to admit that the “demise” of our profession that you are concerned with is a real possibility. However, it is not just our doing , or maybe it is very little our doing. Paul’s note about confidentiality (patients’ pharmacy records being electronically accessable to insurance companies for various good and nefarious purposes) is just the tip of the iceberg. The lack of privacy, together with patients wanting to use their health insurance, makes psychoanalysis as we knew it almost inaccessible but to a few.
Leaving aside the finances of this, psychiatric training, as Jane point out, includes very little experience with psychodynamics. Additionally, psychiatrists are more likely to prescribe medication to 3 patients in 45 minutes than to do therapy with one patient, not just because they get paid more for psychopharm, but also because they do not know how to do therapy. Furthermore, they are really not interested for the most part on learning how. Social workers and psychologists, from what I see at least, do not get much psychodynamic training either. Furthermore, in all the training programs, at least at Harvard, the emphasis is on doing research, even during training. Since this means that the trainees have to work with a faculty member, most of the research deals with current methods of treatment incl. medication, and not with psychodynamic therapy, let alone psychoanalysis.
In my encounters with trainees in all disciplines in my office, their lack of knowledge about the unconscious is astounding. Additionally, even those who are more aware, they are continually discouraged from pursuing any more clinical training and are being coerced into drug trials and CBT research “if they want to get ahead professionally”.
This leaves us with students in academic fields. For the most part, even if they are interested in our field and Freud is taught in their departments, most of them do not have the funds to continue in psychoanalytic training.
I don’t really want to sound like the voice of doom and gloom, but it is my opinion that it would take more than doing away with the TA system and the discussions about standards to rescue this operation. I don’t even know whether lowering fees for training and charging patiens next to nothing would do it, because people are just not on the same thought wave length about understanding themselves as they used to be. Analysis has been absorbed by the culture but is no longer understood as being important. Since life is like a pendulum historically, we may have to wait a while for the pendulum to swing our way again. Maybe we should concentrate on offering psychoanalysis to our politicians as a prerequisite for office.
Sasha
August 15th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Comment from Emanuel Berman:
Dear colleagues,
I fully share Jurgen’s view. The objection to “mixing models” is quite arbitrary, and cannot stop the actual processes of change.
Here is what I wrote to Claudio Eizirik when the initial report was distributed:
Dear Dr. Eizirik,
November, 2006
I read with great interest the Education Committee report. I welcome your invitation for responses, and want to make a brief comment. We should be grateful for this intriguing study. It documents the heterogeneity of psychoanalytic training around the world, in-between the three models but also within each one of them. Practically, there are now dozens of unique training structures within the IPA. Our training in Israel, while closest to the Eitingon Model, has its own unique characteristics; in some countries (e.g., the Netherlands, Canada) two or more divergent models are practiced by different IPA societies; and further changes occur continuously. To me, this is evidence of the liveliness, richness, creativity and autonomy of international psychoanalysis. This diversity cannot be reversed. “The genie” cannot be pushed back into the bottle. We certainly need no Procrustean bed, and a set of three Procrustean beds will be no improvement. Even in Eitingon’s times (see Schroter, “Max Eitingon and the struggle to establish an international standard for psychoanalytic training”, IJP, 83, 2002), when diversity was much lesser, the attempt to regulate training “from above” completely failed.
My conclusion is that the IPA Education Committee should be a body encouraging thought, research, critique and dialogue among various societies and regions, striving to improve the quality of the world-wide exploration of issues of training. Specific enforcement of structures, rules and numerical schemes is hopeless with the present diversity; attempting such regulation may be experienced as coercive, and block the innovation which is vital for our future. The valuable oversight role of the IPA should be expressed differently: in initiating debate, in offering consultation, in posing challenges.
Sincerely yours,
Prof. Emanuel Berman
Training Analyst, Israel Psychoanalytic Society; Member, IPTAR