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The training [[analysis ]] is the personal course of [[psychoanalytical ]] [[treatment ]] that every psychoanalyst must undergo with a certified [[analyst ]] prior to, or in parallel with, his or her [[theoretical ]] training, and before beginning to [[practice]].

As late as 1909, [[Freud]]'s answer to the hypothetical question "How can one become a [[psycho]]-analyst?" was still: "by studying one's own [[dreams]]" (1910a, p. 33). This was a shibboleth that he mentioned several [[times]], but by the following year he widened the requirements: "no psycho-analyst goes further than his own [[complexes ]] and [[internal ]] [[resistances ]] permit; and we consequently require that he shall begin his [[activity ]] with a [[self]]-analysis and continually carry it deeper while he is making his observations on his [[patients]]. Anyone who fails to produce results in a [[self-analysis ]] of this kind may at once give up any [[idea ]] of [[being ]] able to treat patients by analysis" (1910d, p. 145). Freud continued to use the term Selbstanalyse (self-analysis, or analysis of oneself) to include the procedure of being [[analyzed ]] by a senior and more experienced person; Max Eitingon's analysis with Freud (1909-1909), conducted during evening strolls on the Ring, was the first [[instance ]] of a training analysis. Freud later considered it "one of the many merits of the Zurich [[school ]] of analysis that they have laid increased emphasis on this requirement, and have embodied it in the [[demand ]] that everyone who wishes to carry out [[analyses ]] on [[other ]] [[people ]] shall first himself undergo an analysis by someone with expert [[knowledge]]" (1912e, p. 116).

In 1918, with Freud's agreement, Hermann Nunberg proposed at the Fifth Congress of the International Psycho-Analytical [[Association ]] that training analysis be made obligatory. Otto Rank and Viktor Tausk were opposed. The rule became [[official ]] only in 1926. Rank and Sándor Ferenczi (1923/1925) made it clear, however, that "the correct didactic analysis is one that does not in the least differ from the curative treatment"; nor, in their view, should it be confined to physicians.

Ferenczi described the [[necessity ]] for training analysis as "the second [[fundamental rule ]] of psycho-analysis" (1928/1955, pp. 88-89). The adoption of the [[principle ]] by the [[International Psychoanalytical Association ]] (IPA) was the result, chiefly, of the efforts of Eitingon and of the initiative of the Berlin Institute, which had set up a training protocol as early as 1920. The training analysis was a cornerstone of that protocol, and Hanns Sachs was one of the first official training [[analysts]].

[[Writing ]] to Franz Alexander on May 13, 1928, Freud once again raised the bar: "One ought to demand guarantees from the candidates which are not necessary with patients, since regular [[analytic ]] [[work ]] has deleterious effects on one's [[psyche ]] just as work with Roentgen rays has on one's tissues; it [[needs ]] to be countered by steady hard work" ([[Jones]], p. 478). A few years later, at a [[time ]] when the received wisdom was to extend analysis to the [[limit]], Freud even suggested that "Every analyst should periodically—at intervals of five years or so—submit himself to analysis once more, without [[feeling ]] ashamed of taking this step" (1937c, p. 249).

During the years when [[psychoanalysis ]] was expanding, thanks both to the dispersal ofémigrés in flight from [[Nazism ]] and to the strengthening of the movement's institutions, training analysis became the [[subject ]] of innumerable papers, reports, and debates, and the rules governing it were continually changing. A [[letter ]] from Rudolph [[Loewenstein ]] to [[Marie Bonaparte ]] dated February 22, 1953, is eloquent on the prevailing norms: "Here [in New York], as in the American Association, there is a rule requiring training analysis to be conducted on the basis of at least four sessions per week, of between [[three]]-quarters of an hour and fifty-five minutes in length. Even the people in Chicago support this. The worst, though, are the Washington lot."

Regulations of this sort were at the root and core of a [[good ]] many splits in the [[psychoanalytic ]] movement, notably in France in 1953 and 1963, where Jacques [[Lacan]]'s [[short sessions ]] and his [[relationship ]] with his analysands were challenged by the IPA authorities, who eventually [[barred ]] him as a training analyst. Lacan retaliated by decreeing in the founding [[statement ]] of hisÉcole freudienne de [[Paris ]] that training analysis was the purest [[form ]] of analysis, and by proposing (October 9, 1967) the institution of the [[system ]] of induction of analysts that he called "la [[passe]]."

Critics of required training analyses variously underscore the antithesis between a professional [[project ]] and the [[request ]] for a personal analysis, the possibility of [[external ]] rivalries corrupting the [[transference ]] and/or [[counter-transference ]] in such analyses, the hierarchical medical [[model ]] implied by the title of training analyst, and even the [[danger ]] of creating a "restricted transference zone" (Stein). There has been a tendency for the term training analysis to fade from use in training programs: the Paris Psychoanalytical [[Society]], for example, under the influence of Sacha Nacht, prohibited any [[participation ]] of a candidate's analyst in his or her training. The function of the training analyst, however, has shown remarkable staying [[power]], and the international guidelines that the IPA's member societies are bound by in this connection are still the [[object ]] of much debate and negotiation. Each group strives by its own lights to settle on what Freud called "the training most suitable for an analyst" (1926e, p. 252), but the necessity of a preparatory personal analysis is universally acknowledged. Under what [[conditions]], and with whom, are still open questions.

# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1910a [1909]). Five lectures on psychoanalysis. SE, 11: 7-55.# ——. (1910d). The [[future ]] prospects of psycho-analytic [[therapy]]. SE, 11: 139-151.