Introduction

Abstract

Many clinicians interested in group and psychoanalytic thought have followed idiosyncratic and personally constructed modes of preparation. Formal training programs tend to differ in terms of emphasis on degree of previous analytic experience, quantity of supervision, number of courses, requirements to have personal analytic group therapy, as well as length of time required to lead an analytic group. The process of psychoanalytic clinical work seems to have been temporarily idealized but essentially resisted by long ingrained North American pragmatic and spiritual value systems. This has resulted in what has amounted to a 50 year flirtation, rather than identification, with Psychoanalysis by American professional culture. The depth of curative experience for patients and the intensity of clinical acumen for practitioners make an analytic perspective important to maintain.