A recent MIP graduate recounts the grueling process of hurdling the LP in a pandemic. 

Panic stricken and on autopilot, I pretended as if nothing weird was going on outside and sat for my first licensing exam the Friday before NYC shut down—March 20th. Licensing was all I could tangibly clutch after and hope toward in my abject terror, and I had scheduled the exam back when the virus was thought to be limited to Wuhan and Italy. 

Feeling antsy, perched atop an office chair swiveled up a little too high even for me, and dangerously exposed weeks before prophylactic masks and gloves were procurable, I tried to recall what my case argued theoretically. Though my mind went blank, my fingers began nimbly dashing off—with increasing speed and typos flying—something resembling my 12,000-word case narrative in three short hours. 

After the exam I slouched in a socially distant line at City Point Trader Joe’s, poised to snag any leftover dregs of the purported apocalyptic scavenging and hoarding. As my empty IKEA tote flapped wildly in the wind, a creeping, sickening certainty of failure swept over me. All I could remember of the blur, now, was how the X key had begun to stick an hour into furiously pounding away at the keyboard—on a case that featured prominently a discussion of sexxxxxuality.

Six weeks later the testing center reopened, and the same sweet proctor suggested over the phone that I schedule my second test now, before they booked up with essential workers requiring priority. I took the next slot, and prepared in four days—plus the two years I had been culling my case together with supervisors—but I had more confidence now that I knew the drill. I knew which exit to take out of the subway, and I remembered the numerical code for the bathroom. I was going to crush that second test! 

On May 8th, that dear, patient proctor allowed me to take my time hammering at each station to select the room’s most premier, buttery, springiest keyboard. I found my goldilocks chair and rolled it underneath the clock, my mask and latex gloves the only things sticking this time, with all 7 x 10 feet to myself. In the last half hour, a man with buzzed hair sat at the opposite end. I tried not to breathe too deeply and typed faster.

My class—half CPP and half LQP—graduated from the Manhattan Institute on June 7, 2020, after a proud half decade of psychoanalytic training. This was before Zoom had officially swept the world’s remote work and social communities. We opted against a party over video—unable to bear putting colleagues and family through a lame virtual graduation if we couldn’t even pop champagne for them—and instead we quietly rang in our accomplishments privately as the world crashed down around us, on fire with protests, plague and literal wildfires.

I purchased my first jigsaw puzzle, streamed shows I won’t name here and continued to see clinic patients over video, who wanted to talk about the general fear of dying in a nation at war with itself. They needed to know that I wasn’t dying (yet) and asked every session how I was doing. In the new normal, I felt it my responsibility to join them, and I didn’t do the therapist thing of withholding, but answered openly, which I still do for its grounding effect in isolation.

Through trial and error imposed by faulty internet, pre router update, I discovered that I communicated better with certain people over the phone, which in remote work functions rather like the couch does in person. It was freeing on those inevitable days that video denied us and we found ourselves somehow more connected.

Agonizing summer weeks ticked endlessly by, and my unanswered polite inquiries to the state went unacknowledged until August 6th—fiveish months after my first exam. Great news: you passed your first exam! 

August 8th, two days later—bad news: you failed your second exam! A total bomb of a low score—too low to admit here. What had happened? I had thought the complete opposite. My anxiety shot through the roof.

I put my head down and crammed for three solid months—a case I already knew, inside and out. I tried to study during the debates. I recorded myself reading my case aloud. I went to sleep with my own voice reading my case, and when I reached that point of deliriously belting out in song for myself I always laughed, no matter how half asleep I was. I filled notebooks with felt-tip markers repeating my case narrative in loud colors: defenses, resistance, history, transference, countertransference, interventions. I made flashcards. I stood to integrate new neural pathways with old muscle memory, reciting each card before peeking. I reversed the order. I kept forgetting to refer back to the presenting problem. I watched with bated breath the returns, and the election—my own personal arbitrary deadline—came and went.

I retook my second exam on December 7th—this time in a huge room with better social distancing and the sun shining through a sheer shade directly into my eyeballs. My case pulled up on the screen and I had to squint from the piercing sun and also to believe my eyes: I had dissociated so entirely during my second exam that I had clearly improvised a case I now barely recognized! In an unprecedented cavalier self state with some serious swagger I had made almost everything up on the spot. 

This time around my fingers knew what to do. Ten months into the plague, on January 12th, I finally passed. 

 

Tricia Brock, MFA, LP, graduate of MIP’s licensure qualifying program, is editor of the Analysis Now blog. She is also in private practice in NYC. 

For LP exam jitters, see: Preparing for the New York State Case Narrative Examination for the License in Psychoanalysis: An Unofficial Guide by Vanessa Bright, L.Ac., L.P.

 

 

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