The ATP aims to celebrate the theory and practice of psychoanalysis by endorsing its roots in the Freudian tradition and simultaneously allowing the work to continue its evolution. We look to Lacan, among others, as an example of success in this endeavor. The distinction between transmission and training is highlighted in order to clarify one of the puzzles inherent to our task: the questionable status of knowledge. The value of training can, in so many cases, be reduced to that of menus in a time of famine, as Freud puts it. Transmission, on the other hand, affirms the view of education as an impossible, and thereby ethical, project. In renouncing the image of any training that could be seen as total, we animate and sustain the work, and embrace the requirement for an approach that is, at times, tangential.

Excerpt of Letter to Elizabeth Mayer (January 1, 1940) by W.H. Auden