The confusions of young T. Years of psychoanalytic apprenticeship beside the couch

Journal title PSICOTERAPIA E SCIENZE UMANE
Author/s Johannes Cremerius
Publishing Year 2026 Issue 2026/3
Language Italian Pages 14 P. 443-456 File size 301 KB
DOI 10.3280/PU2026-003007
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The difficulties that candidates of a psychoanalytic institute encounter in learning the theory and technique of psychoanalysis are described, focusing on the internal contradictions of training models and in articles on technique as it has evolved over the years. Candidates find themselves torn between the orthodoxy of the classical model they have been taught, based on neutrality and verbal interpretation alone (as theorized, for example, by Kurt R. Eissler in 1953 for the “basic model technique”), and the pressures toward a more active, empathic, or “maternal” technique (in the wake of Sándor Ferenczi’s experimentations). This clinical fragmentation, combined with the sociocultural and economic barriers of today’s patients, who are very different from the uppermiddleclass patients Freud and his early pupils treated, can create a profound sense of inadequacy in young analysts, as well as difficulty managing their own emotional and countertransferential involvement. To overcome these difficulties, a reform of the training of psychoanalytic institutes is proposed that promotes a critique of the myth of the “classical technique” and of therapy as a mere applied theory, the sharing of the clinical work of faculty members and their difficulties, greater freedom in research and teaching, and the birth of an autonomous and emancipated clinical style.

Keywords: Psychoanalytic training; Contradictions in psychoanalytic education; Standard psychoanalytic technique; Crisis of psychoanalytic training; Autonomy in candidates of psychoanalytic institutes

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Johannes Cremerius, I turbamenti del giovane T. Anni di apprendistato psicoanalitico accanto al divano (1979) in "PSICOTERAPIA E SCIENZE UMANE" 3/2026, pp 443-456, DOI: 10.3280/PU2026-003007