Psychoanalytic Institutes as Religious Denominations: Fundamentalism, Progeny, and Ongoing Reformation

Reply to Panel Questions

“…As we attempted to implement this approach, we discovered several potential dangers (see Bass, 2000;Druck, 2000;Eisold, 2000;Kernberg, 2000, andSorenson, 2000, for more extensive discussions of the promise and perils of pluralism). The first was thatgiven the limits of a four-year analytic curriculum-no single position would be presented thoroughly enough, with sufficient depth and conviction, that the candidate could internalize it in comprehensive form.…”

Institute Life beyond Graduation

“…I have been impressed by the already ample creative examination of problems in the literature on training aspects of institute life. A selective and by no means exhaustive listing of the topics covered would include the dialectic between institutional and individualized approaches to training and the complexities of supervision (see Berman, 2003;Crastnopol, 2003;Cresci, 2003;Kernberg, 2003;Rees, 2003); the problematic effect of psychoanalysis' history on contemporary training paradigms (Eisold, 1998;Kirsner, 2000;Berman, 2004;Bonfilio, 2007;Hatch,2007;McCarroll, 2007;Slavin, 2007); and the varying effects of fundamentalism versus pluralism in analytic education (Bass, 2000;Druck, 2000;Eisold, 2000;Sorenson, 2000). This listing addresses ContemporaryPsycboanalysis, some of the prime relational and interpersonal sources.…”

Psychoanalysis and Interdisciplinarity With Non-analytic Psychotherapeutic Approaches Through the Lens of Dialectics

“…Many scholars who reflect on this phenomenon usually think that a therapist from another therapeutic persuasion is regarded as belonging to a foreign culture (Wachtel, 2010 ) and that the other functions to define and maintain self-definition and the values of the approach (Sampson, 1993 ). The distinction between us vs. them helps to consolidate those who follow the method and give them political power (Sorenson, 2000 ).…”