ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis has maintained a traditional apprenticeship model of education. This apprenticeship model, the intensive psychoanalytic supervisory experience, has developed around a didactic and personal relationship with a senior practitioner or mentor. As in other fields, this educational model has great advantages in allowing the student to learn about and to integrate complex tasks through the processes of instruction and identification. The purpose of this paper is to distinguish critical issues in the personal and technical development of psychoanalytic psychotherapists from the perspective of object relations theory. This paper focuses on those critical developmental issues in the supervisory process that occur in a regular sequence for most supervisees and lead to the development of clinical competence in psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy. In focusing on the development of clinical competence through the critical stages of the personal development of a psychodynamic psychotherapist, several important aspects of education and training will be ignored in this discussion. It is assumed: that the student therapist or analyst has begun personal therapy or analysis and has developed a comfortable mode of personal self-observation and understanding; that the relationship with the supervisor provides a safe and supportive atmosphere for growth and understanding; and that the student therapist has acquired sufficient technical competence to develop a working relationship with the patients.
