The beginnings of psychoanalytic supervision: the crucial role of Max Eitingon

Psychoanalytic supervision is moving well into its 2nd century of theory, practice, and (to a limited extent) research. In this paper, I take a look at the pioneering first efforts to define psychoanalytic supervision and its importance to the psychoanalytic education process. Max Eitingon, the "almost forgotten man" of psychoanalysis, looms large in any such consideration. His writings or organizational reports were seemingly the first psychoanalytic published material to address the following supervision issues: rationale, screening, notes, responsibility, supervisee learning/personality issues, and the extent and length of supervision itself. Although Eitingon never wrote formally on supervision, his pioneering work in the area has continued to echo across the decades and can still be seen reflected in contemporary supervision practice. I also recognize the role of Karen Horney-one of the founders of the Berlin Institute and Poliklinik, friend of Eitingon, and active, vital participant in Eitingon's efforts-in contributing to and shaping the beginnings of psychoanalytic education.

Sandor Rado and the fate of the Berlin model in New York

This paper examines the influence of the Berlin model on psychoanalytic education in New York through the person of Sandor Rado, who was recruited from Berlin to become the first Education Director at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute in 1931, and later went on to found the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. While the basic elements of the so-called tripartite model of psychoanalytic education were adopted in principle in New York prior to Rado's arrival, he had an enormous impact on the development and implementation of that curriculum, while attempting to modify it both theoretically and clinically, and became one of the focal points of the controversies that led to the break-up of that institute. He also sought to expand ties to American medicine and psychiatry and to research in general.

Delineating prototypes of training psychotherapy

Abstract There is no reported research comparing psychotherapy for trainees to psychotherapy for clinical patients. This preliminary study examines similarities and differences between the Training Psychotherapy Experience (TPE), an elective offered to residents in a large psychiatry training program, and psychotherapy conducted by the same clinicians in their private practices (TAU). We used the Psychotherapy Process Q-set (PQS; Ablon & Jones, 1988; Ablon, Levy, & Katzenstein, 2006). All program consultants who perform TPE were offered their standard fee to complete one PQS while envisioning a typical TPE session and another while envisioning a typical TAU session, using their own assessment of what happens in such sessions. These data were subjected to factor analysis to develop prototypes (TAU and TPE) that could be compared with each other and with validated prototypes developed by Ablon and Jones (1998, 2002). Twenty-two of the 25 clinicians who perform TPE (88%) responded to the study. We found two distinct prototypes in both TPE and TAU. One correlated significantly with Ablon and Jones' Cognitive-Behavioral and Interpersonal prototypes, and the other with their Psychodynamic prototype. There was no significant difference between corresponding TPE and TAU prototypes. We conclude, first, TPE offers trainees an experience of psychotherapy that is very similar to psychotherapy of actual patients. Second, experienced clinicians integrate a broad array of useful interventions into both TPE and TAU.

Analytical space and work in Russia: some remarks on past and present

In this paper, the author outlines the historical-cultural picture in the former USSR and post-Soviet Russia. He looks at some facets of psychoanalysis in Russia in the years immediately before and after the October Revolution as well as in its recent history, exploring the implicit question of how the wider social context, and specifically totalitarian and post-totalitarian reality, has influenced psychoanalytic work and analytic space in this country. With the help of Sebek's concept of the totalitarian object and Britton's formulations about the triangular space, the author attempts to understand the interaction of external and internal space and to give an introduction to the problem of establishing the analytic setting as well as finding some new possibilities of enlarging the space for new psychoanalysts in Russia.