Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses from an anthropological perspective the training of psychoanalytic psychotherapists. It offers a detailed survey of the hidden institutional devices used in psychoanalytic training to help reproduce the world of shared practice and meaning. The book provides a history of the institutional development of psychotherapy in Britain, presents three broad historical trends that have influenced the state of the community. The historical trends include the expansion of psychotherapy during the twentieth century; the proliferation and stratification of training schools that has accompanied this growth; and the growing attack psychoanalytic psychotherapy has sustained during the last quarter of the twentieth century. The book shows that the psychoanalytic habitus not only supports a species of clinical practice, but a way of life. It shows how the ‘psychoanalytic imagination’ is appealed to within the institutes to legitimate the training they offer.