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The Beginnings of Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Crucial Role of Max Eitingon

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Abstract

Psychoanalytic supervision is moving well into its 2nd century of theory, practice, and (to a limited extent) research. In this paper, I take a look at the pioneering first efforts to define psychoanalytic supervision and its importance to the psychoanalytic education process. Max Eitingon, the “almost forgotten man” of psychoanalysis, looms large in any such consideration. His writings or organizational reports were seemingly the first psychoanalytic published material to address the following supervision issues: rationale, screening, notes, responsibility, supervisee learning/personality issues, and the extent and length of supervision itself. Although Eitingon never wrote formally on supervision, his pioneering work in the area has continued to echo across the decades and can still be seen reflected in contemporary supervision practice. I also recognize the role of Karen Horney—one of the founders of the Berlin Institute and Poliklinik, friend of Eitingon, and active, vital participant in Eitingon’s efforts—in contributing to and shaping the beginnings of psychoanalytic education.

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Notes

  1. The most sensational and scandalous controversy in which Eitingon became embroiled had nothing to do with psychoanalysis. Then as now, speculation has swirled and continues to swirl about his perhaps having been a secret operative for Soviet Russia, maybe even a Stalinist spy or assassin in his post-Berlin days. In an earlier article appearing in this journal, Moreau Ricaud (2005) deftly dealt with those issues and the seeming unfairness of it all for Eitingon and his hard-earned reputation of beneficence. Nevertheless, a recent scholarly paper (Ginor & Remez, 2012)—in which new evidence was used to consider Eitingon’s possible Soviet involvement—is sure to once again fan the flames of speculation about that matter.

  2. Such debate about the training analysis is by no means new, has been with us down through the decades, and was even present during Eitingon’s time. For instance, in the 1930s, Kovacs (1936)—when presenting the Budapest model as alternative to the Berlin model—argued that: (1) the training and control analyses must overlap; and (2) the training and control analyst must be one and the same person (thereby allowing for countertransference analysis to best occur). As Balint (1948) later indicated, Kovacs’ first recommendation eventually found widespread favor, but her second recommendation was hotly debated and proved to be “the main topic of discussions at both Four Countries’ Conferences” (p. 166).

  3. The way in which the training analysis has evolved across the decades may be a big part of our problem: It has metamorphosed into something far different now from what it was then in 1920s Berlin. As Kirsner (2010) has nicely described, training analysis at the outset was flexible, potentially short, relatively unintrusive, and designed to give the candidate a sampling of psychoanalysis. Freud, considered to be the first training analyst, even provided such analysis to Eitingon on their nightly walks in Vienna. Only later did the training analysis come to be viewed as “a means of control instead of liberation” (Kirsner, 2010, pp. 976–977) and the “pseudo-private … concealed center of everything” (Kächele & Thomä, 2000, p. 807).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the Editor and reviewers for their most helpful feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript. I benefited greatly from their ideas about how to expand the scope of this paper and make its content more meaningful.

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Correspondence to C Edward Watkins Jr..

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1Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of North Texas.

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Watkins, C. The Beginnings of Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Crucial Role of Max Eitingon. Am J Psychoanal 73, 254–270 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/ajp.2013.15

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