Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a family of psychological theories and methods within the field of psychotherapy that seeks to elucidate connections among unconscious components of patients' mental processes, and to do so in a systematic way through a process of tracing out associations. In classical psychoanalysis, the fundamental subject matter of psychoanalysis is the unconscious patterns of life as they become revealed through the analysand's (the patient's) free associations. The analyst's goal is to help liberate the analysand from unexamined or unconscious barriers of transference and resistance, that is, past patterns of relatedness that are no longer serviceable or that inhibit freedom. More recent forms of psychoanalysis seek, among other things, to help patients gain self-esteem through greater trust of the self, overcome the fear of death and its effects on current behavior, and maintain several relationships that appear to be incompatible.

Training

Throughout the history of psychoanalysis, most psychoanalytic organizations have existed outside of the university setting, with a few notable exceptions.

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Psychoanalytic training usually occurs at a psychoanalytic institute and may last approximately 4-10 years. Training includes coursework, supervised psychoanalytic treatment of patients, and personal psychoanalysis lasting 4 or more years.

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Most psychoanalytic institutes require that applicants already possess a graduate degree. Applicants usually have degrees in clinical social work (MSW or DSW), clinical psychology (PhD or Psy.D), or medicine (MD). A handful of institutes also accept applicants who have graduate degrees in nonclinical disciplines.

Related Topics:
Clinical social work - Clinical psychology - Medicine

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An ongoing debate in professional psychoanalysis concerns the prior qualifications candidates must have to enter analytic training. Freud believed that applicants from the humanities and many nonmedical disciplines are as well prepared as physicians for psychoanalytic training. Early in the history of psychoanalysis, prominent analytic organizations tried to limit psychoanalytic training to physicians. Later, after extensive debates and legal battles, psychoanalytic training in most institutes was opened to nonmedical mental health professionals, such as psychologists and clinical social workers. Currently, access to training by appicants from nonclinical disciplines, such as literary studies and philosophy, is limited. A small number of institutes, citing Freud's belief that training in the humanities provides good preparation for analytic training, admit nonclinical applicants. However, there is an ongoing effort by analysts with prior training in mental health to restrict access to analytic institutes by such applicants, repeating the early monopoly on psychoanalytic training by physicians.

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