Psychoanalytic Credos

Book excerpt: Developing psychoanalytic credos, a set of beliefs that inform how you listen and approach the analytic enterprise with patients, is in many ways the scaffolding of psychoanalytic training. Drawing upon Mannie Ghent’s original Credo essay, 27 psychoanalysts were asked to write their credos and/or their psychoanalytic journey. This book represents a multi-theoretical and multi-generational grouping, trained at different institutes, during different eras (grouped by decades 1960-2000) and across cultures. They are drawn from analysts identified with Relational, Object Relations, Contemporary Freudians and Kleinian/Bionian perspectives as well as those who don’t easily fit categorization. This book serves to provide companionship to analysts in training, as part of reading lists in institutes as well as analysts post-training and yet still evolving in their psychoanalytic journey.