ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights certain characteristics of contemporary analytic practice. It examines specific aspects of personal analysis, supervision and psychoanalytic institutions, and considers the most relevant in the endless process of developing and striving to maintain an analytic identity. From about the 1980s, references began to appear in the literature concerning changes in analytic patients and new descriptions gradually emerged that contrasted with Freud’s classic depictions of neurotic patients. The mind of the analyst is increasingly considered a vital element of the analytic relationship. One element that can either stimulate or fail to stimulate the construction of an analytic identity is the institutional climate that predominates in each society or institute, as well as how the trajectory of each future analyst is viewed within each psychoanalytic culture. There is extensive literature on analytic supervision and it is well known that its relevance varies according to the model adopted.
