Subservient analysis

Abstract

‘Ought training analysis to be maintained?’ This question, posed by Elias da Rocha Barros, chairing the IJP Congress of Training Analysts in 2001, is used by the author as a startingpoint from which to present his ideas on the subject. The paper is divided into three parts. In the first the author presents a survey of the principal criticisms directed at training analysis since 1930. He examines a series of papers that have attracted the attention of those who have studied the subject, with the intention of describing the functional organisation of training analysis and its effects. The second part, based on the criticism presented in the first part, deals with the continuous pressure put on training analysis, in order to maintain its ‘didactic’ character. This transforms it into an autonomous reality, external to the pair, preceding and steering it. The author describes and discusses this structural aspect of its organisation. In the third part he presents two hypotheses about what factors nourish training analysis in spite of the thoroughness of the criticisms aimed at it. He describes training analysis as a fetish and as an ideological construct. As a fetish it is utilised by analysts to deny the limitations of analysis tout court, and as an ideological construct it is used to conceal its symptomatic character, naturalising it through its prescriptive institutional functioning. The author consequently replies to the initial question in the negative, even suggesting that all analysis discriminated as ‘training analysis’ ought to be abolished, leaving to the analysands the task of taking care of their analyses. This would be a measure that would also assist in the de‐ideologisation of the Institution's mode of operation. The third part also contains a discussion and a criticism of a few suggestions addressed to training analysis in order to modify its functioning and character.