The role of critical thinking and research in psychoanalytic education

Abstract

The debate regarding the enhancement of critical thinking and the integration of research findings, including those from related disciplines, into psychoanalytic training and education is not new. Many current critiques of psychoanalytic education and training practices echo previous disaffections. As far back as 1952, Glover wrote: It is scarcely to be expected that a student who has spent some years under the artificial and sometimes hothouse conditions of a training analysis and whose professional career depends on overcoming ‘resistance’ to the satisfaction of his training analyst, can be in a favorable position to defend his scientific integrity against his analyst’s theory and practice.… Glover continues: An analyst, let us say, of established prestige and seniority, produces a paper advancing some new point of view or alleged discovery in the theoretical or clinical field. Given sufficient enthusiasm and persuasiveness, or even just plain dogmatism on the part of the author, the chances are that without any check, this view or alleged discovery will gain currency, will be quoted and re-quoted until it attains the status of an accepted conclusion. Some few observers who have been stimulated by the new idea may test it in their clinical practice. If they can corroborate it they will no doubt report the fact; but if they do not, or if they feel disposed to reject it this scientific “negative” is much less likely to be expressed, at any rate in public, and so, failing effective examination, the view is ultimately canonized with the sanctioning phrase “so and so has shown”. In other words, an ipse dixit acquires the validity of an attested conclusion on hearsay evidence only. (p. 403) It is humbling—and discouraging—to recognize that we continue to have the same debate, with few significant changes in psychoanalytic educational practices and habits of mind.