Training analysis

A training analysis is a psychoanalysis undergone by a candidate (perhaps a physician with specialty in psychiatry or a psychologist) as a part of her/his training to be a psychoanalyst; the (senior) psychoanalyst who performs such an analysis is called a training analyst. A training analysis is a psychoanalysis undergone by a candidate (perhaps a physician with specialty in psychiatry or a psychologist) as a part of her/his training to be a psychoanalyst; the (senior) psychoanalyst who performs such an analysis is called a training analyst. For most of the psychoanalytical societies, a training analysis is different both from a psychoanalysis performed for the 'therapeutic treatment of a patient' and from psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The pioneers of psychoanalysis did not have training analyses - of the inner circle around Freud, Ernest Jones said jokingly that the first training analysis was a series of walks taken by Max Eitingon with Freud around the streets of Vienna! Freud himself credited the Zurich school around Jung with first raising the question of an analysis for budding psychoanalysts, but it was only after World War I that the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute led the way in mandating a training analysis of a year at least: half a century later, it would not be unusual to spend fifteen years in (a double) training analysis. The principle of an obligatory training analysis was formalized by the IPA in 1922, a strong lead being given in this by Sándor Ferenczi.