How I Become a Psychoanalyst |
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Authors: | Darlene Bregman Ehrenberg Ph.D. |
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Affiliation: | 1. William Alanson White Institute , New York City;2. New York University, Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis |
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Abstract: | In this essay, I focus on how my personal history contributed to my choosing to become a psychoanalyst, what I then encountered and the choices I made professionally, and the issue of being “inside” versus “outside” the classical tradition. In this context, I describe some of the political conditions that prevented Ph.D.'s from being able to be trained as analysts within the classical tradition during those years. I also describe how the training I received outside the classical tradition actually was much broader than what would have been offered within it and how it allowed for a level of intellectual freedom and critical thinking about traditional ways of working that would not have been possible in the classical institutes. I also describe briefly how I began developing the concept of working at the “intimate edge” in the analytic relationship, which I first began writing about in 1974 and which is detailed most fully in my 1992 book, The Intimate Edge: Extending the Reach of Psychoanalytic Interaction, and in several subsequent publications (Ehrenberg, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2003). |
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