Jungian Training and Being Trained: Letting in the Light

Jungian Training and Being Trained lets in the light on the unconscious forces that shape the training experience of trainees and trainers. It explores and challenges many of the implicit assumptions that influence and fashion the trainings on offer. International contributors, each engaged in the development and delivery of training, examine the various conscious and unconscious beliefs and processes that not only creatively inform, support, and structure the training process, but also undermine or contaminate it. The aim of training candidates is to enable them to develop into authentic analysts who have learned the competences they need, have developed personally, can use their imagination, and will be safe to work with a range of patients in different environments. While Jungian trainings in different parts of the world will vary in their structures, content, and processes, most will involve a gatekeeping process for admissions, requirements for personal analysis, the study of theory, working with patients in supervision, and to have in place a process of assessment during training until qualification. The book includes chapters devoted to contemporary training values, the dynamics of selection for training, the role of a training analysis, cross-cultural challenges in trainings, the role of theory in training, diversity, and inclusion, and the personal stories of recently qualified candidates about the pleasures and challenges of their training experiences. Themes running through the book are the potential damage that unaccountable power among the analysts and those who organise training can exercise in our trainings, resistances to change within our training institutes, failures to appreciate cultural differences, and questions of how diverse and inclusive we really are when it comes to our candidates. This book is essential reading for all those training or trained in analysis. It raises important ideas for the psychoanalytic community to consider and implement to ensure analytic training institutions achieve their aims and offer best practice for trainees and trainers.