The experience of undergoing psychoanalytic training as an openly gay candidate-a personal note

Abstract

ABSTRACT The author reports on the experience of training as an openly gay psychoanalytic candidate at the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research after the American Psychoanalytic Association changed its policies on admitting gay and lesbian candidates. In addition to his positive experiences, the author describes some of the difficulties he encountered which were specifically related to his being an openly gay man. He tells of going through the various components of training: application, screening, training analysis, classes, and supervision. The obstacles the author faced were certainly fewer than those of his gay and lesbian predecessors. However, the unconscious issues still existing within the analytic community that make the experience of training for openly gay candidates, in particular the group responses and regressive phenomena that derive from internalized homophobia, are still present and active, and remain to be understood and analyzed.