Max Eitingon and the struggle to establish an international standard for psychoanalytic training (1925‐1929)

This paper deals with the first years of the IPA's International Training Commission (ITC). The author begins by outlining the Berlin model of training, including some less familiar aspects, and he describes how the foundation of the ITC in 1925 was designed for promoting the general establishment of institutionalised training according to this pioneer model. In relation to lay analysis, he highlights the issue of central power versus local autonomy with regard to admission policy. The latter part of the narrative is devoted to an ITC subcommittee (‘Eitingon Committee’), appointed in 1927, which tried to formulate training guidelines for the whole IPA, again with a clear Berlin profile. The discussion of the draft of these guidelines among all branch societies (with Freud himself participating) revealed some interesting disagreements, while the ‘closed’ nature of the system, as opposed to what later came to be called an ‘open system’, was hardly challenged. The initiative failed, apparently through American opposition, but essentially because of the developmental gap between local societies as to the institution of specialised psychoanalytic training. The paper is based largely on unpublished material and also provides some information about Max Eitingon, the least well known of the early leaders of psychoanalysis.