ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that psychoanalytic education needs to be thoroughly grounded in the broad notion of psychoanalytic thought as a theory of mental functioning that can be applied to therapeutic intervention as well as other fields of study and an understanding of the social environment. In fact, psychoanalysis has a long and proud history of doing “applied” psychoanalysis or doing what psychoanalysts ought to do wherever they find themselves, which is applying psychoanalytic thought and values to their work. The profession as a whole needs a broader agenda for educating psychoanalysts, one that offers a rightful place for psychoanalysis outside the consulting room as well as its traditional role inside the office. Traditional psychoanalytic education has focused on the training of clinicians for the practice of psychoanalysis with individual patients, and it rarely or only lightly touches on the multiple ways psychoanalytic theory can be used in other settings or disciplines.
