EPF - News

Howard Levine: Report on The Education Conference of the European Psychoanalytic Federation, December 2009

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:29:20 GMT

The Education Conference of the European Psychoanalytic Federation, December 2009

Howard Levine

The European Psychoanalytic Federation (EPF) consists of all the member societies, provisional societies and study groups of the IPA located in Europe and Israel. Each year, the EPF convenes a weekend conference on psychoanalytic education to study problems of education and training. The conference takes place in a small, study group format and provides an opportunity for psychoanalytic educators and administrators to work together to compare notes, learn from each others’ experiences and study issues and problems that may arise in training. For the past few years, the focus of these conferences has been on supervision and I was both surprised and delighted when I received an invitation to attend. Not only was this an opportunity to visit Zurich and see and work with European colleagues and friends, but the meeting was to be held in the historic halls of the Bergholzli, a clinic made famous by Bleuler, Jung and Sabina Spilrein! (The Bergholzli is still a functioning psychiatric hospital and clinic, although the vineyard that sits on the side of the hill on which it is located is now in the hands of a private winemaking company. In the early days, it belonged to the church, which ran the hospital, and the wine that was made there was sold to support the hospitals’ activities). What follows is a brief account of my experience, intended not only to inform our readers about what I encountered, but also to stimulate thought and discussion about our own procedures and practices at MIP.

The conference itself was constructed in a most interesting format. There were about 75-80 participants, divided equally between two tracks. The first track, which I followed, consisted of small groups that met to discuss the presentation of a candidates’ supervision. The second track of small groups was the continuation from previous conference years of a working party, whose task was to study the role of supervision in facilitating and assessing candidates’ readiness for graduation. In each track, confidentiality was maintained by making sure that no one in the small group came from the institute of the presenting, supervising analyst. The conference began with two brief plenary addresses attended by all of the participants from both tracks, which framed the issues to be studied, and concluded with each small group making a brief summary presentation to the assembled whole of the main points of their work that weekend. This was followed by a free form discussion of what we had heard and experienced and some thoughts about future meetings.

I was deeply impressed by the openness of thought and seriousness of purpose that went into the discussions. There seemed to be a relative absence of authoritarian or dogmatic stance, despite the strong differences that exist between the “Anglophone” and “Francophone” training models – more on this below an honest curiosity to examine and explore comparative schools and methods of training and, above all, a powerful sense of responsibility to the candidates and to the profession to try to create and communicate expected standards of achievement for progression and graduation, in order to maximize the value of analytic training.

As I listened to my European colleagues struggling to articulate what the ideal goals and attainments of a psychoanalytic education should be and how those goals and attainments should be operationalized, measured and communicated, I thought again of how battered many of us in Boston had been by the restrictive, gait-keeping mentality of the “old school” analytic training (pre-MIP) and that there did not have to be an inherent contradiction between an open and forthright discussion of standards, judgments and evaluation and the respectful treatment of candidates as adult learners. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed that this respect required this kind of discussion with candidates at every step of the way, from admission to graduation. That way, candidates would know what they were signing on for and both faculty and candidates could be in open, active and in continuous dialogue about the goals of analytic training and how each candidate and his or her teachers and supervisors felt that he or she was progressing towards those goals. Interestingly, in regard to the latter, our European colleagues prefer to use the term, “analytic formation,” rather than “training,” for what they try to help candidates undergo, because they believe that the term, “formation,” has the connotations of identity development and the achievement of a new internal psychic organization, while “training” connotes conformity to some externally imposed, predetermined form.

Among the topics addressed in my small group were the different levels of responsibility that supervision could involve and the ways in which these sometimes were in conflict. As is the case here in the US, some areas hold the supervisor – and by implication, the training program - responsible for the clinical outcome of the case under supervision. Supervisors also felt a strong sense of responsibility to their Society, the profession and the general public in addition to the candidate and the candidates’ patient, in regard to the clinical and/or analytic outcome of the case. Supervisors also felt a teaching obligation to the candidate and a responsibility for the on-going development of the candidate’s analytic identity and analytic competence. How to prioritize these various, sometimes conflicting goals is a matter of great delicacy, interest and discussion.

There was much discussion and debate about the terms in which the candidates’ analytic competence and identity were to be measured, with an awareness that these were at times highly individual, very subjective, and sometimes difficult to generalize or quantify. However, there seemed to be a consensus that what was at issue was the development of the candidate’s psyche, which was to be considered in terms of the candidates’:

1. analytic identity

2. access to deep emotional contact with the psyche of the patient, as well as the candidate’s own inner world

3. capacity for self-reflection, free association, and self-analysis in regard to the patient’s material and the candidate’s own countertransference

4. capacity to consider, reflect upon and free associate to the supervisor’s observations of where the analytic or supervisory process and dialogue might be becoming temporarily stuck or derailed

5. capacity to internally track some reasonable vision of the analytic process

6. integration of theory and technique

7. application of technique in the production of a useful analytic process.

There was also a sensitivity to the ways in which competing models of analytic work reflective of different analytic schools within a given society could influence the culture of a training program and impact training and supervision. Thus, there was acknowledgement of the importance of maximizing candidates’ exposure to different clinical teachers, supervisors and points of view.

As noted above, the EPF works within two different training models. The “Anglophone” model (also called the Eitengon model, after its initial proponent) is the one that we are familiar with here in the US: candidates are accepted into training on the basis of their potential, start a training analysis and take seminars, treat patients under supervision and eventually go on to unsupervised analytic work and graduation. The “Francophone” model (practiced in French speaking countries and where French analysis has had great influence, such as some parts of Spain and Moscow (!)) designates supervising analysts, but not training analysts. As in MIP, candidates in the Francophone model are free to be in personal analysis with whichever analyst they wish. However, unlike MIP or the Anglophone programs, candidates are admitted to training only after they have had significant analysis and are carefully examined prior to admission for the quality and degree of their personal progress towards achieving the psychic qualities deemed central to a successful analytic formation, including the understanding of their motivations for becoming a psychoanalyst.

As you can imagine, there is still a great deal of debate going on as to what these qualities are, how they are to be recognized, and so on. What this means, however, is that candidates starting classes and supervisions in the Francophone model are, for the most part, already quite advanced in terms of personal analytic internal capacity and so, at least in theory, should be better able to free associate, deal with inevitable countertransference, and approximate some of the developmental and learning goals listed above. Consequently, while some of the Anglophone supervisors might have envied their Francophone counterparts because of their “more analytically developed” supervisees, the Francophones sometimes felt that they had the more difficult job, since they couldn’t deal with significant countertransference blocks in their students by suggesting that candidates “take it up with your analyst.”

Our colleagues were very interested to hear about some of MIP’s attempts at innovation in training and had many questions about how things worked for us. They were also impressed with the strides that we had made and with my very biased assessment that we were at present the most interesting, diverse and successful of the three institutes in Boston! Need I also mention that Zurich is a beautiful, although expensive city, that even in winter a walk along the lake, from which you can see the snow covered alps in the distance, is a true delight and the food, wine, hospitality and famous Swiss capacity for organization and order make for a most pleasant stay? It is less than a week since I have returned and I am already looking forward to next year and hoping for an invitation to return.

What is Specific About Psychoanalysis Today? Friday 10th - Sunday 12th December 2010. Christopher Ingold Building, University College, London

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 09:47:46 GMT

What is specific about the way we do psychoanalysis? Do we know and can we agree on how to answer this question? Is it possible to understand and discuss the reasons for our different ways of working without trying to tell each other how to work (overvision)?

This conference will build on the work of the EPF Working Party on Comparative Clinical Methods and their development of a systematic means of comparing the ways in which analysts work. We will try to advance the process of understanding what we really do when we do psychoanalysis.

There will be small group clinical seminars and an introductory session. Two experienced clinicians will present work and participants will have the opportunity to discuss it first with them and then in small groups using the EPF methodology. There will also be the opportunity for colleagues to present parallel papers on the conference theme.

In this way we hope to provide a unique opportunity to address (and help each other to address) what exactly we think we are doing when we do psychoanalytic work and to take rigorous clinical thinking forward. We will attempt to avoid overvision!

Speakers and Seminar Leaders will include:

• Dana Birksted-Breen • Olivier Bonard • Catalina Bronstein • Marie-France Dispaux • Michael Feldman • Betty Joseph • Chris Mawson • David Millar • Richard Rusbridger • Anne-Marie Sandler • David Tuckett

Call for Parallel Papers: We would welcome submissions of parallel papers based on the conference theme. Please submit abstracts to n.harding@ucl.ac.uk by 30th September 2010.

There will also be limited opportunities to present material at the clinical seminars. If you are interested in presenting your work, please contact n.harding@ucl.ac.uk.

F OR FURTHER INFORMATION AND BOOKING PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE

For booking and further information please contact n.harding@ucl.ac.uk.OR

Speakers and Seminar Leaders will include:

Call for Parallel Papers: We would welcome submissions of parallel papers based on the conference theme. Please submit abstracts to n.harding@ucl.ac.uk by 30th September 2010.

There will also be limited opportunities to present material at the clinical seminars. If you are interested in presenting your work, please contact n.harding@ucl.ac.uk.

F OR FURTHER INFORMATION AND BOOKING PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE

For booking and further information please contact n.harding@ucl.ac.uk.OR

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy NOW. 2010 Saturday 9 October. 'Meeting the Challenge of Complexity Together'Mermaid Theatre. Blackfriars, London

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 09:37:43 GMT

Join colleagues from across the psychoanalytic and psychodynamic spectrum at this year’s follow-up to the successful 2009 Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy NOW conference. Together we will continue to engage with the main intellectual and strategic challenges faced by our discipline in this new century, and how to drive forward a process of revitalisation.

Direct link to conference programme and information:

FORUM OF EDUCATION, ZURICH, 3-5 December 2010

Thu, 20 May 2010 11:35:33 GMT

FORUM OF EDUCATION

ZURICH, 3-5 December 2010

Click here to download the REGISTRATION FORM

The Forum on Education offers a place and time to share different experiences and

ways of thinking among European analysts. It is open to both training and

supervising analysts, with the limit of forty participants.

As in recent years the Conference hotel will be the Hotel SEEFELD,

Seefeldstrasse 63, 8008 Zürich. The Conference itself will be held nearby at the

Psychiatrische Universitatsklinik Zurich “Burghölzi”, where Bleuler and Jung

worked.

Since 2005, the topic has been in relation to Supervision. In 2007 the theme was

‘Different Conceptions of Supervision between Teaching and Analysing’. In 2008

the theme was ‘Supervision between Learning Technique and Developing

Authenticity’. Last year the theme was ‘Why is it so difficult to Discuss Supervision’.

For 2010 the topic will be

‘Controversies between Supervisors and the Training Committee’.

Participants will be divided into small groups. Each small group will have a

presenter, a moderator and a reporter. The presenters will be Dr. Francesco

Conrotto/Naples, Dr. Eva Schmid-Gloor/Zürich and two others.

The Forum will begin on Friday evening with a cocktail and opened by the

President of the Swiss Society, at the Hotel Seefeld. Saturday morning will

commence with a plenary session that will include a short theoretical paper raising

the main questions on the topic given by Dr.Howard Levine/USA. Then we will

break into four small groups for the rest of the morning and the afternoon. We will

meet again for a short plenary session (one hour) at the end of the afternoon to

exchange our experiences of working in small groups. On Sunday, we will begin

with another small group session before attending a closing plenary. The Forum

will finish at 1:00 p.m.

At the same time we will continue the experiment of last year in having a Track 2.

These participants will continue with the End of Training Evaluation Project (ETEP).

There will also be a short opening paper from one of the track 2 participants at the

opening plenary.1)

The registration fee is 90 euros, which covers the meeting rooms and coffee

breaks.