Our Training in General Psychoanalysis

Training as a psychoanalyst, or in a related profession that uses Freudian theory, is extremely difficult — not only because of the high financial cost and the limited number of training schools, but also because of the absolute heterogeneity of psychoanalytic knowledge and the rejection from the contemporary mental health education establishment, where psychoanalysis is generally no longer considered a science.

The mixture of education and politics has attacked Freudian ideas, often out of ignorance and distrust, or because they have been viewed as a theory that undermines the common good by promoting individual freedom and human flourishing.

The idea that human beings can control their instinctive compulsions and gradually acquire greater free will is considered dangerous, and eventually immoral, by many societies.

Not only is there a great Tower of Babel of knowledge and ideas, but there is also a very low quality of psychoanalytic training in most countries, despite the often titanic efforts of psychoanalysts working within small isolated groups. Many psychoanalysts work alone, trying to do the best they can under difficult conditions, especially because of the poor education they received, particularly in smaller and more isolated communities.

The few international psychoanalytic institutions have lost much of their scientific value by becoming trapped within the political mentalities of their eras.

The accessibility provided by the Internet and modern virtual educational platforms makes the dissemination of knowledge more reachable, even to the smallest and most isolated communities. We hope this will help many countries, where current psychoanalytic developments remain minimal, gain access to high-quality knowledge and benefit from the great therapeutic potential psychoanalysis can currently offer.

These major developments include making classical psychoanalytic treatment shorter and more practical, while also contributing to the treatment of all kinds of psychosomatic illnesses in a brief and effective way, and helping intervene in all kinds of acute life crises — no longer only chronic neurosis. Yet all of this remains largely unknown, even among experienced psychoanalysts in major cities with a strong psychoanalytic tradition, or is known only in fragmented and impractical ways. Psychoanalysis, like many aspects of contemporary Western society, suffers from a sea of confusion.

At the same time, there is a growing wave of freedom, spiritual growth, and transcendence to which psychoanalysis may contribute. Many people seeking this kind of expansion struggle to find scientific, useful, and trustworthy tools, and often fall into misleading forms of exploitation and fanaticism that, instead of liberating them, restrict them even further.