I’ve trained at a classical psychoanalytic institute – the Contemporary Freudian Society (CFS). CFS is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), the international consortium of institutes started by Freud and, to this day, the largest and most authoritative (and probably, the most conservative) of the various analytic associations.
What follows is a highly subjective, opinionated description of the training landscape in New York. I don’t represent any of the following to be fact; rather, it’s my sense, after about a decade of observing and participating in the analytic training world in New York – all from a very particular perch.
Before I start, just a little biographical detail on me, so you know whence all this comes: I got my masters in social work at NYU’s Silver School, graduating in 2014. Prior to that, I had undergone a classical analysis (over a decade, four days a week, on the couch) with a Columbia-trained analyst. While I was at NYU, I did an internship on an inpatient psychiatric unit of a hospital, and another at the outpatient psychotherapy clinic of a training institute (the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, or NIP).
Upon graduation, I enrolled in analytic training at CFS (having applied to, and been rejected from, William Alanson White, the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, and the Training Institute for Mental Health; having been accepted by CFS and IPTAR; and having applied to, but withdrawn my applications from, NIP and a couple of other institutes).
For several years, now, I have co-chaired CFS’s recruitment efforts, leading the process by which we try to attract prospective candidates.
I tell you all this so you can apply requisite grains of salt to what I write. I’ve begun with a broad description of the landscape for analytic training in New York. I will follow, in a subsequent post, with opinionated discussions of several of the institutes.
Introduction: the landscape
I think of the analytic training landscape in New York as three different, mostly discontinuous, landscapes. We can define them differently, but I think of them, primarily, as differing along two, or maybe three, axes. And I should say, I think just about everyone to whom you might speak about all this would disagree with some or all of what follows. It’s my take, not a representation of objective reality:
Institutes differ in their conception of just what “psychoanalysis” is and how it’s learned
I can’t give you enough caveats: what follows is my own opinionated caricature of the differences among various institutes.
At one end of the spectrum, places like CFS, IPTAR, Columbia, NYPSI, and, arguably, NPAP, White, PANY, and PostDoc conceive of psychoanalysis as something that happens between analyst and analysand, typically over a course of many years, typically at a frequency of 3, 4, or 5 times a week, and typically, with the analysand on the couch. Each of these institutes holds to these strictures with greater or lesser fidelity, but all agree that analysis can be a profoundly transformative process, one candidates must experience both as analysand and as analyst, to become qualified.
Generally speaking, while didactic instruction is important in all of these institutes, it’s not, fundamentally, where most people get the “juice” of their training; rather, we get it in a combination of our own individual analyses as patients and the ones we conduct under close supervision (typically called “control cases” or “control work”). It takes us a long time – six, eight, ten, or more years to graduate in programs like these, because they tend to want graduates to have experienced the profound changes available in long-term analytic treatments both as patient and clinician before they “let us loose on the world” to practice analytically without supervision.
At CFS, candidates remain in their training analyses for the duration of our training, and typically have two control cases at frequencies of three or more times a week, with at least one at a frequency of four or five times a week. One of those control cases has to be seen for more than three years at that frequency. By the time I graduate (I hope, soon!), I’ll have seen one of my control cases four times a week for more than six years. My other, I will have seen for four years at frequencies ranging from two to five times a week, but the bulk of that time, at four times a week. And, I’ll have been in my training analysis four times a week for over nine years.
In other words, I’ll have spent 360 hours in didactic instruction, about 400-500 hours in individual control case supervision (and 1-2,000 hours providing analysis to my control patients), and seen my own analyst upwards of 2,000 hours. This distribution of time provides a good indication of where and how I have learned to be an analyst – and, an excellent way to understand the various positions on the spectrum I describe here.
In the middle of the “spectrum,” there are places like ICP and NIP – institutes that conceive of psychoanalysis as more of an approach to psychotherapy than its own distinct endeavor. These institutes tend to be less concerned with the transformational aspects of psychoanalysis, of the transference, and more concerned with the theoretical approaches implied by various analytic theories and perspectives. Generally, as a result, they graduate their trainees in four years. They require trainees to be in their own treatment, typically at two or three times a week, for most of their training, and they require trainees to see at least one or two patients two or three times a week, typically for a year or two. A pie chart describing a training experience at such an institute would look more like this:
[I’ve shown the chart at about half the size of the first chart because the training takes about half as long.] Note how much larger “didactic instruction” is as a share of the second pie.
And then, there’s a third place on the spectrum – places that conceive of psychoanalysis as a very specific theoretical endeavor, in the tradition of a single thinker: maybe Jung, or Spotznik, or Lacan, or Horney. These places seem to me more like the NIPs and ICPs of the world, in terms of the trajectory of their training: it’s a discrete transmission of theory and experience, more than a transformational process, that typically takes four years. (Their pie charts would look similar to the second, smaller chart above.)
Institutes differ theoretically, culturally, and politically
While some institutes commit themselves to one theoretical approach, every institute has its own meta-theoretical approach. The White institute, for example, is predominantly “interpersonal” in its approach. NYPSI and Columbia tend to be the most classically Freudian – and, the least open to more contemporary modifications in or additions to theory. CFS, IPTAR, PostDoc, and PANY all are more or less classical in their approach to analysis, but are very open to – and in PostDoc’s case, explicitly teach – other approaches.
Institutes differ culturally, as well. NYPSI is famously formal, stuffy. You can’t miss how at a NYPSI event, people are introduced as “Dr.” or “Mr.” or “Ms.” PostDoc, my sense is, lies at the other end of the “formal” spectrum. Lew Aron, the longtime director of PostDoc, generally wore jeans and a t-shirt to work. Every institute has fairly rigid hierarchy; some make half-hearted attempts to disavow the power in the hierarchy and some don’t. And some are more committed to the hierarchy, while others are less so. At some institutes, candidates socialize with one another; at others, they treat their institute more like a commuter school, attending classes and obtaining their supervision and analyses, but not forming a community. And some institutes feed societies – candidates enter a community upon graduating – while others feed alumni associations, much looser, less collegial groups.
Finally, politics: I use the word, here, to refer not to Democrat/Republican electoral politics, but rather, to the ways institutes relate to the contentious issues of the moment. In 2023, those issues include electoral politics, but, from an analytic perspective, the politics I have in mind are the politics of identity – and the ways we conceptualize and operationalize those politics within our organizations, and our psychoanalytic frameworks.
Most (all, I would bet) institutes in New York have almost exclusively white membership, with Jews disproportionately represented. I suspect one could count the number of Black IPA training analysts in New York on one hand (and probably, have a finger or two left over). While many institutes have a number of Spanish-speaking members, the bulk of those are white-passing Latin Americans. Psychoanalysis is a profession of privilege, and its practitioners reflect, and perpetuate, that privilege.
Institutional psychoanalysis handled (and, honestly, still handles) non-heterosexual sexual orientation shamefully. For the most part, today we are busy repeating those very same errors today around questions relating to gender identity.
While many institutes generally are trying hard, I’m unaware of a single IPA institute in the city that can claim credibly to be meaningfully anti-racist, or to be genuinely welcoming to and accepting of trans or gender non-binary candidates, or even to be consistently, unfailingly welcoming to gay candidates. I really hope that changes in the coming years.
Institutes differ in the larger psychoanalytic associations to which they do – and don’t – belong
When Sigmund Freud invented psychoanalysis, he created the IPA. The IPA remains the world’s preeminent such organization, with “component societies” all over the globe. Analysts trained by member institutes earn the title of “Fellow of the IPA,” a title recognized all over. If psychoanalysis were American academe, the IPA would be the equivalent of the Ivy League – not to say the best, but certainly, the most historically elite.
IPA institutes in New York
- American Institute for Psychoanalysis (AIP)*
- Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research*
- Contemporary Freudian Society (CFS)
- IPTAR*
- National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP)
- New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute (NYPSI)*
- Psychoanalytic Association of New York (PANY)*
- William Alanson White Institute*
* also a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA).
