Do training in analytical psychotherapy in Paris

The term analytical psychotherapy refers to the psychotherapeutic treatment provided by the psychoanalytic method, i.e. the method of free associations.

In our article "doing analytical psychotherapy in Paris", we have highlighted that this term of analytical psychotherapy is a pleonasm insofar as, to date, the method of free associations is the only method which allows the healing of symptoms.

As it treats the cause of the symptoms, the free association method is the only current method that can be considered psychotherapeutic to date.

Let us point out that when Freud discovered the method of free associations, he abandoned the use of hypnosis. In other words, with regard to the dialectical movement of science by which erroneous theories are rejected in favour of valid ones, suggestive methods have become obsolete by being replaced by the method of free associations.

The current persistence of such suggestive techniques (CBT, hypnosis, sophrology, coaching, meditation, etc.) reveals precisely what Freud discovered about training in psychotherapy: the psychotherapist must carry out his own psychoanalysis himself if he wants to be able to ensure the psychotherapeutic treatment of his fellow human beings.

It is not respecting this ethical rule that sustains the epistemological confusion at the origin of the crisis that the field of medicine and psychology is currently facing.

Training in (analytic) psychotherapy and psychoanalysis is primarily structured around the clinician's personal treatment. In Paris and throughout the world, it is above all the psychotherapy and psychoanalysis of the psychotherapist which are essential in his training.

Not only will the clinician's treatment allow him to learn from his own psychoanalyst and his own experience of the method of free associations. But above all, it is the sine qua none condition for being able to legitimately occupy the position of psychotherapist and psychoanalyst.

Indeed, it is impossible to ensure the psychological treatment of one's fellow human beings if one does not carry out one's own cure because it is structurally impossible to conduct a cure and allow a being to know about one's desire whether we ourselves remain alienated from our own desire.

In other words, if a shoemaker can have bad shoes and can do a good job, a psychotherapist cannot provide psychotherapeutic treatment if he himself continues to remain neurotic.

From the reduction of psychoanalysis to analysis to the current errors of medicine, psychiatry and psychology, non-compliance with this ethical rule generates logical aberrations which disorient the very function of care.

From an epistemological point of view, the psychotherapist's treatment is essential to the extent that it is very complicated, if not impossible, to correctly theorise the results of clinical experience without doing one's own psychoanalysis, i.e. without getting rid of illusions that alter our judgments.

This ethical rule concerning training in so-called analytical psychotherapy is fundamental and we believe, given the staggering cost generated by erroneous treatments, in medicine, psychiatry and psychology in particular, that it should apply to all researchers in psychopathology.

Moreover, the current separation between so-called theoretical research and clinical experience sufficiently illustrates the problem which affects the field of health: the pitfalls of medicine and psychology arise precisely from this misestimation of the weight of neurosis in the training of the researcher and the caregiver.

Freud very quickly understood the necessity that doctors who wanted to practise psychoanalysis must first submit themselves to psychoanalytic treatment. But the history of psychoanalysis suggests to us that this ethical rule continues to be cancelled retroactively. His contempt leads to a distortion of technique, theory and therefore training in psychotherapy.

To refine the practice of psychoanalysis and its transmission, Fernando de Amorim highlighted that the psychoanalyst's treatment should be endless as long as he continues to practise.

In view of our own clinical experience and the pitfalls which are repeated in the history of psychoanalysis until today, we can only confirm the necessity of this ethical requirement.

After having underlined the preponderance of personal treatment in the training of the psychotherapist and the psychoanalyst , we can specify that the training in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, in Paris or elsewhere, takes place in a School of psychoanalysis.

Through supervision, clinical meetings, seminars, reading groups, the School of Psychoanalysis provides clinical and theoretical training.

Clinical experience is, like the clinician's treatment, the most important element of training in ( analytic) psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. It is for this reason that schools of psychoanalysis such as the RPH (Network for Psychoanalysis at the Hospital), in Paris, promote training in psychotherapy from the first years of training. By providing a room to carry out psychotherapies and psychoanalysis and by inviting students to receive patients while being supervised, the psychoanalytic association in Paris trains clinicians to psychotherapy and psychoanalysis by confronting them with experience as early as possible.

Complementary to university training which is still desirable but literally secondary in terms of the importance of clinical practice, it is ultimately the confrontation with clinical experience, both in one's own treatment and in the handling of the technique with patients and psychoanalysts, which constitutes the essential part of the training in psychotherapy called analytical, in Paris and elsewhere.

If you would like to know more about the framework of training in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, do not hesitate to contact me directly or visit the website of the Network for Psychoanalysis at the Hospital.

Do training in analytical psychotherapy in Paris