How Do We Teach Psychoanalytic Theory?

Psychoanalysis is a praxis; a clinical practice that is underpinned, framed and facilitated by theory. Trainings emphasise the content of psychoanalytic theories and their importance for clinical practice; the ‘what’ and the ‘why’.There is little attention paid to how we come to take in, consciously and unconsciously, the psychoanalytic theories that are presented to us however, or how the teaching experience can facilitate or inhibit what we take in. In this piece I invite us to reflect on ‘how’ we teach psychoanalytic theory. I introduce the Cultural Encounters Case Study Method, a new theoretical-experiential psychoanalytic pedagogy for teaching clinical concepts to trainees, which I have been developing and delivering for over a decade.