ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that traditional methods of teaching produce a stranglehold on creative learning. It explores one particular path, the vicissitudes of the path that leads a person to learn to become a psychoanalyst or psychoanalytic psychotherapist. The optimistic reading of John Keats is, therefore, that the experience of learning and—indeed—of psychoanalysis too can be life-affirming and enhancing. Learning-centred problems are, after all, issues which concern the very nuts and bolts of psychoanalysis. Learning-centred problems are, after all, issues which concern the very nuts and bolts of psychoanalysis. In 1996, Otto Kernberg published a highly entertaining, tongue-in-cheek paper entitled: 'Thirty Methods to Destroy the Creativity of Psychoanalytic Candidates'. In many countries, psychoanalysis is recognised as a discipline which is deeply engaged in argument and debate with psychiatry philosophy, anthropology and sociology; whereas in many other countries, it seems, these interactions are deemed to be both too difficult and too dangerous, if not impossible.
