Nodal Points: Critical Voices in Contemporary Psychotherapy / Psychoanalysis by Joseph Schachter, M.D., PhD. & Horst Kächele, M.D., PhD.

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Nodal Points: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Psychoanalytic Therapy by Joseph Schachter & Horst Kächele

Mounting evidence attests to a decline in psychoanalysis in the Western world. For example the APsaA (American Psychoanalytic Association) analytic practice survey of 2006 demonstrates that the average number of analytic patients per member continues steadily to decline. Follow-up studies of recent analytic graduates at three institutes, Columbia University Center, New York indicate that four out of five analytic graduates devoted almost all their practice to other-than-four-session per week analytic treatment.The number of new candidates continues to decline; several pairs of institutes have merged in the hope of attracting a combined number of new candidates sufficient to start a class.

Serious problems with psychoanalytic education have been identified in Anglo-American and European countries. Psychoanalysis has scant presence in universities or in departments of psychiatry or of psychology; university libraries are subscribing to fewer psychoanalytic journals. Psychiatric texts pay little attention to psychoanalysis. Fewer publishers are printing psychoanalytic books.

We believe that neither public relations, advertising nor outreach community programs can reverse this decline in psychoanalysis. The only effective response will be analytic research programs which by testing the tenets of analytic theory and practice will reestablish respect for the integrity and effectiveness of psychoanalysis in both the general public and in the scientific community.

In agreement with many esteemed colleagues we are convinced that the training analysis system, by its nature, creates obstacles that interfere with the candidate becoming interested in and involved in analytic research, and therefore, we open this volume on critical issues in contemporary psychoanalytic therapy with a brief discussion of training analysis.