Psychoanalyst as profession for women-an eventful history

摘要

The path that women have taken in psychoanalysis since its inception has often been rocky and arduous. The first generation of female psychoanalysts had to overcome high educational barriers, which prevented them from passing their school leaving examinations and even more so from studying. Nevertheless, numerous pioneers succeeded in gaining recognition in the new profession. Many of them belonged to the intellectual avant-garde and they were often politically left-wing oriented. The gradual opening of psychoanalytical training to "laymen" enabled a rapidly growing proportion of women to take up the new profession. At the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy (DI), during the Nazi era, many women found their place there. While in 1950 the ratio of men to women in the German Society for Psychoanalysis, Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Depth Psychology (DGPT) was 63% to 37%, by 2018 it had reversed to a ratio of 40% to 60%. This imbalance in distribution will increase rapidly: among the training candidates of the German Psychoanalytical Society (DPG) there are 68.8% women and 31.2% men. The question will be how the psychoanalytical professional societies and training institutes will react to the fact that the psychoanalytical profession of the future will be more and more "female" and, after the amendment of the Psychotherapists Act, younger and younger.