The third element of your training is the psychoanalysis of two patients, under the supervision of a training analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society.
You will be given permission to start treating your first analytic patient when the SPC is satisfied with your progress and thinks you are ready. This permission may be given at any time after the first year of your training. You will see your patient for fifty-minute sessions each day, five days a week. You will have regular meetings with your supervisor to work through problems and questions arising from your work with this patient.
When you start seeing your own patients, they will normally pay a fee to the Institute and, as an analyst in training, you will not receive any of this payment. When the SPC is satisfied with your overall progress, and your first supervisor has also given his or her agreement, you will receive permission to take on a second patient. The supervised analysis of patients is a crucial part of your analytic training, as it is an opportunity to bring together all of your theoretical and practical learning, and apply it in a real analytic setting.
After analysing your first patient for at least two years, and your second for at least one year, and provided you are making satisfactory progress, the SPC will make a report to the Education Committee recommending your qualification as a psychoanalyst with the British Psychoanalytical Society. After qualifying, we expect you to continue treating your patients until you have completed their analyses.