Among its functions, the personal analysis aims to develop the capacity for empathic understanding. This experience is broadened and conceptualized through seminars and supervised clinical work. The goal of the educational program is the development of those clinical skills necessary for analytic effectiveness. The program also seeks to promote psychoanalytic scholarship and research. The Training analysis is a personal therapeutic analysis conducted by a training analyst.
Accepted candidates make their own arrangements with the training analyst of their choice.
The aim of the training analysis is to resolve and master neurotic personality problems, to free the candidate from unconscious attitudes that might interfere with psychoanalytic competence, and to provide the candidate with a first-hand experience of unconscious forces and resistances. It will be conducted at a minimum of four times a week and should continue through a substantial period of the candidate's experience in analyzing patients under supervision. The candidate's personal analysis forms the core of the educational experience around which the supervised analytic work is built. The course work of the curriculum helps to organize and conceptualize these experiences and by case discussions broadens the candidate's exposure to a wider variety of cases. The four-year curriculum for training in adult psychoanalysis is offered from noon to five on Fridays.