Becoming and being a training analyst, I: rationale and methods of an EPF study

Over the last 70 years, the literature on training within our institutes has been largely negative. The role of the training analyst - both in working with individual candidates as analysts and supervisors, and as part of a powerful élite within the institute hierarchy - has come under particular fire. The literature has been mirrored by proposals in many institutes to ‘flatten’ that hierarchy to reduce what leaders such as Kernberg have deplored as ‘toxic’ aspects of our institutional life. This paper begins our reporting on an in-depth project within the EPF’s Working Party on Education. The project involved interviewing training analysts active in several European institutes about their histories, and what their work in psychoanalytic education meant to them. We aimed not to pursue any ‘political’ agenda, but to try to illuminate the negativity in the literature from this key perspective, using a lens of qualitative interview research methods. This paper introduces the context and dilemmas in finding a good methodology to study the personal and professional experiences of training analysts. A pilot study is summarised, then why we adopted a more direct approach which produced contrasting findings. The following paper presents findings from our second, larger study