ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how in seminars the psychodynamic imagination becomes deeply affirmed and wins for it conceptual dressing. It explores how via the institutional transmission of ‘standardised’ therapeutic knowledge such knowledge is protected from criticism. The chapter suggests that the educative atmosphere in which psychoanalytical knowledge is transmitted is by and large more ‘affirmative’ than ‘critical’. Theoretical seminars are usually held at the institute. Typically on any one evening there might be a number of seminars taking place in different rooms, each seminar catering for candidates at different stages of their training. Seminars leaders are always themselves trained therapists involved in professional practice, and are often graduates of the institution at which they teach. On occasion these leaders are newly qualified therapists who, aspiring to reach higher positions in their institutes, are travelling the familiar route by which higher positions are attained: via the teaching and supervising of students.
