ABSTRACT
Authoritative training analysts have propagated the illusion that prospective analysis could be evaluated in face-to-face consultation and that suitable good cases could be selected. The myth that an evaluation is possible in a consultation has been propagated in courses on “selection” and “analysability". These courses persist in spite of the fact that outcome research demonstrates that it is not possible to accurately prognosticate outcome at the beginning of analyses. Caligor and colleagues describes evaluations conducted by candidates supervised by training analysts. Their methodology attempted to make their evaluations as objective as possible. Prospective analysands participated in structured interviews and questionnaires as well as specific tests intended to quantitatively measure depression and anxiety. The prospective analysand’s objections are viewed as enactments that are analogous to symptoms. The symptomatic enactments often have a transference significance and derive from unconscious fantasies that are best understood as compromise formations.
