Toward a Psychoanalytic Way of Teaching Psychoanalysis

Abstract

The author's orientation to psychoanalytic education blends its subjective and objective ways of knowing, its cognitive and experiential aspects. Lear's (2003) definition of psychoanalysis as a subjective category contextualizes psychoanalytic teaching as a lived-out demonstration of its conceptual learning and generates a confident humility in how teachers express theoretical content. The author emphasizes teachers' gut-level psychological impacts on candidates, and the value of teachers conveying psychoanalytic knowledge as an internalized expression of their personal experience and meaning (identification), while simultaneously maintaining an objective perspective. A literature review of psychoanalytic education and discussion of Stanislavski's (1936, 1949) dramatic acting "Method" clarifies the author's pedagogy.