Difference between revisions of "Training"
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Revision as of 09:34, 26 April 2006
training (formation, didactique) The English word 'training' is used
to translate two French terms used by Lacan: analyse didactique ('training
analysis') and formation ('professional training').
- .'Training analysis' (Fr. analyse didactique) By the time Lacan began
traming as an analyst, in the 1930s, it had become established practice in the
International Psycho-Analytical Association (IPA) to make a distinction
between 'therapeutic analysis' and 'training analysis' (this distinction is still
maintained by the IPA today). In the context of this distinction, the term
'therapeutic analysis' refers to a course of analytic treatment entered into by
the analysand for the purpose of treating certain symptoms, whereas the terni
'training analysis' refers exclusively to a course of analytic treatment entered
into by the analysand for the purpose of training as an analyst. According to
the rules governing all the societies affiliated to the IPA, all members must first
undergo a training analysis before being allowed to practise as analysts.
However, an analysis is only recognised as a training analysis by these
societies if it is conducted by one of the few senior analysts designated as a
'training analyst', and if it is embarked upon purely for the purpose of training.
This institutional distinction between training analysis and therapeutic
analysis became one of the main objects of Lacan's criticism. While Lacan
agrees with the IPA that it is absolutely necessary to undergo psychoanalytic
treatment if one wants to become an analyst, he firmly disagrees with the
artificial distinction drawn between therapeutic analysis and training analysis.
For Lacan, there is only one form of the analytic process, irrespective of the
reason for which the analysand embarks upon treatment, and the culmination
of that process is not the removal of symptoms but the passage from analysand
to analyst (see END OF ANALYSIS).
All analyses are thus capable of producing an analyst, and all claims by
institutions to say which analyses count as training and which do not are
bogus, for 'the authorisation of an analyst can only come from himself'
(Lacan, 1967: 14). Lacan therefore abolishes the distinction between thera-
peutic analysis and training analysis; all analyses are training analyses, at least
potentially. 'There is only one kind of psychoanalysis, the training analysis'
(S11, 274). Today, many Lacanians have dispensed with both the term
'therapeutic analysis' and the term 'training analysis', preferring to use the
term personal analysis (a term Lacan himself uses occasionally; see S8, 222) to
designate any course of analytic treatment.
e The training of analysts (Fr. formation des analystes) This refers to the
process by which people learn how to conduct psychoanalytic treatment, i.e.
how to be analysts. For Lacan, this is not simply a process that analysts go
through at the beginning of their professional life, but an ongoing process.
There are two sources from which analysts learn how to conduct psycho-
analytic treatment: their own experience of treatment (first as patients, then
as analysts), and the experience of others which is transmitted to them via
psychoanalytic theory. Lacan insists that the most fundamental of these
sources is the analyst's own experience of psychoanalytic treatment as a
patient. However, this does not excuse the analyst from having to learn a lot
more besides; Lacan's syllabus for the training of analysts is very extensive,
and includes literature, linguistics, mathematics and history (E, 144-5). The
analyst must seek to become, as Freud was, 'an encyclopedia of the arts and
muses' (E, 169). This broad curriculum is evident in Lacan's public seminar
which is filled with incursions into philosophy, topology, logic, literature and
linguistics - all of which Lacan regards as essential to the training of analysts.
It is worth noting that the English term 'training' is nuanced rather differ-
ently to the French term formation. Whereas the English term carries connota-
tions of a formal programme, or a bureaucratic structure, the French term
(especially in Lacan's work) connotes a process which alters the subject in the
very kernel of his being, and which cannot be regulated by set ritualistic
procedures nor guaranteed by a printed qualification.