Training analysis in the dutch society for psychoanalytic psychotherapy: A survey of attitudes and feasibility

SUMMARY

As is the case in many training courses in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, one of the training requirements of the Dutch Society for Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy (NVPP) is a training analysis, currently a minimum duration of 700 hours. During the last few years, this requirement has become somewhat controversial. Because the NVPP does not have information about the current interest in NVPP membership, the Board of the NVPP decided to do a survey. Of 995 psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, who had recently completed their training, or were still in training, 623 filled in a questionnaire. Of those who are interested in the NVPP training, 39 per cent judged the training analysis as not feasible in terms of time, and 61 per cent in terms of money. Forms of personal treatment thought desirable for anyone who wishes to become a psychoanalytic psychotherapist at a specialist level are, in descending order, psychoanalytic psychotherapy (63%), psychoanalysis (39%), psychoanalytic group psychotherapy (25%), and psychoanalytic marital or family therapy (6%). Respondents who judge personal analysis as not feasible, also tend to judge psychoanalysis to be equivalent to other forms of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, whereas those who judge personal analysis as feasible, tend to think that personal analysis is essential for a psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the specialist level.     

MAKING UP THE TRUTH

A recent account of the meaning of 'real' leads to a view of what anti-realism should be that resembles fictionalism, while not being committed to fictionalism as such or being subject to some of the more obvious objections to that view. This account of anti-realism explains how we might 'make up' what is true in areas such as mathematics or ethics, and yet these made-up truths are resistant to alterations, even by our collective decisions. Finally it is argued that the sort of anti-realism suggested explains the appearance that the ethical domain supervenes on the naturalistic.