
FORUM ON EDUCATION
Friday 5th December 18.00 to Sunday 7th December 13.00
EPF House, 35 Rue Gérard, 1040 Brussels (Etterbeek), Belgium
The topic of the 2025 Forum on Education will focus on the analyst’s analytical attitude. It follows on from last year’s Forum subject on ‘Boundary violations in Training and Institutions’.
Analytic Attitude in Training and Supervision
This year’s Forum on Education will explore the question of the analyst’s analytic attitude in training and supervision. Idealisation and negative countertransference and the candidate’s/ supervisee’s confusion about their relationship with the training analyst and supervisor can seriously put the analyst’s analytical attitude of neutrality to the test. The reality of the status of training and supervising analyst is challenged by elements of unresolved dependency relationships activated by unavoidable unconscious transference/ countertransference implications and unrecognized problems around authority-conflicts within our institutions.
What are the implications of considering technical neutrality to be a fundamental principle in theory? To what extent do institutional norms influence our analytical attitude, and how can our subjective perspective be (co-) determined by them?
As training analysts, we encounter complex internal and external dynamic situations with our training candidates, as we are involved in comprehensive supervisory processes relating to the relationships between patients/candidates and supervisors/supervisees. Divergence of theoretical and clinical approaches and training regulations, which can overlap with the supervision process, may inflict on dependency relationships, reinforced by the external reality of the institution.
The phenomenon of transference-displacement in the supervisory parallel process can be an important source for supervision, but it can also affect the analytic attitude, possibly influenced by an unresolved countertransference problem in the supervisee’s relationship with his/her patient, especially when split-off parts are projected and acted out in the supervisory situation.
In what ways can we communicate or interpret this specific difficulty with the candidate/supervisee in an open, collegial and constructive manner in the supervisory process?
The theme will be discussed by two keynote speakers:
Leopoldo Bleger and Sølvi Iren Kristiansen (Abstracts below)
The topic will also be the subject of clinical discussion groups and plenary sessions.











