The future of psychoanalytic institutes

Both conceptual and institutional problems permeate psychoanalytic institut es. Although institutional problems are historically based, they also deriv e from confusions around ill-defined concepts that lead to arbitrariness, a uthoritarianism, and the stifling of creativity. Psychoanalysis is a humani stic discipline that is touted as a science but is organized as a religion. Problems surrounding the right to train pervade psychoanalytic schisms, an d transmission comes through processes of anointment. Institutional "false expertise" invokes the aura of anointment where training analysts pass down received truth through an esoteric pipeline depending on genealogy instead of function. Quasireligious thinking and politics rush in to fill the gap between the level of claimed knowledge that affords qualification and the f ar lower level of real knowledge. Institutes should rely on evidence of can didates' performance and engage in open-ended inquiry.