In the spirit of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, in which Rilke advises the younger Franz Xaver Kappus on the essential sensibilities of becoming a poet, Analysis Now blog co-editors Justine Duhr and Robert Levin invited some senior colleagues to write a few words of advice to budding analysts finding their way in our profession. Here’s what they had to say.

 

 

Irwin Hirsch, Ph.D.:

I suppose there are two broad elements to this question, one pragmatic and the other related to being as capable as one can be.

The more pragmatic issue, of course, is related to earning a living from one’s independent practice. This is not easy, especially in our overcrowded population of analysts in this metropolitan area. I wish I had great wisdom here, though all I can advise is to make as many professional and personal contacts as possible and at least get started in practice by accepting low fees, insurance-based or otherwise. The more one works clinically, the better one gets and sometimes patients refer other patients. I also suggest becoming optimally active in the profession (committees, workshops, meetings, etc.). Contributing to the profession can pay dividends. In sum, the more anyone’s name is known by colleagues, the more it increases the chances of receiving highly sought-after referrals.

Being as good an analyst as one could be is related in large part to seeing as many patients as possible, in spite of some very low fees. I’d suggest seeing all types of patients, from high- to marginally functioning. I’d suggest pursuing training in child therapy, too. Developing skills in this profession is a long road and made more difficult if not exposed to significant contact with a range of patients. I believe that supervision beyond formal training is a must, be it individual paid supervision or peer-group supervision. I’d also recommend being up on our contemporary literature, subscribing to at least two journals. I believe it also helps to read fiction, see films, high-quality television series. This has always helped me personally in staying attuned to contemporary life.

I wish there was more I could say to make it easier for beginning analysts, though it was never an easy road for me nor for most of my peers. Finally, be devoted and roll with the inevitable disappointments.  

 

Debora Worth, LCSW:

My first piece of advice to young therapists comes from Winnicott: cultivate your ability to play. My second piece of advice is to get comfortable with not knowing. For me, these two are intricately connected, and for many people not as simple as they sound.

As analysts, we spend much of our time hanging out in the realm of uncertainty, confusion, contradiction, and misunderstanding. There may be months at sea in the fog with no sight of the sun or of dry land. To tolerate that murkiness day in and day out, we need to find a way to relax and go with the flow, and to trust that we, and our patients, will make it through. Being able to play in the analytic space is what enables us to be creative in how we arrange and rearrange what we see and feel in these elusive encounters, and frees us from the expectation that there is a “right” answer, or even a “right” question. Being able to play in the waves keeps us from drowning.

My last piece of advice comes, appropriately, from a poem that was introduced to me on my first day of analytic training. The poem, by Kenneth Koch (2005), is entitled “One Train May Hide Another.” The last line of that poem reads, “It can be important / To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there” (p. 442). I encourage you all to play around with that idea as it pertains to therapy.

 

Chanda Griffin, LCSW:

I am reminded of a quote by anthropologist Gregory Bateson: “The point of the probe is always in the heart of the explorer.” My advice to new analysts is to continue your psychoanalysis.

After being immersed in analytic training for 4.5 years, I found myself flooded with anxiety. It occurred to me that, although I would soon be a certified analyst, my accomplishment did not include feeling certain. I was not certain about my clinical acumen or my ability to maintain an analytic practice. Although the intellectual and emotional process of training increased my confidence, my fantasies of being completely analyzed, self-actualized, and beaming with the wisdom of a shaman quickly dissolved. Like many candidates, my training analysis was my only analysis; my newly discovered self-knowledge barely scratched the surface of how my transferences impacted my work.

With a deeper understanding of the intersubjective field – two psyches, two subjectivities in the consulting room – I now recognize how every question, interpretation, and silence is colored by my conscious and unconscious wishes and fantasies. Fostering my patients’ curiosity to know themselves is carefully balanced with knowing myself, knowing the very personal motivations at the heart of my analytic practice.  

 

Blair Casdin, LCSW:

Know yourself.
Be yourself.
If you’re thinking it, say it. After you say it, ask about it.
If “they’re not ready,” you’re not ready.
You are co-pilots on a journey somewhere unknown.
Let stories unfold.
Remember your first impression. It will never be the same.
Look for unconscious communications. Look for gaps. Look for hints.
Ask about dreams. Let them tell you what they mean.
Be open to change within yourself. You will grow along with them.
Laugh.
Play.
Go on vacation. Turn off your phone.
Stick to the frame. Notice when you don’t.
Always be curious.
Listen deeply.
Try not to judge.
Never shame.
Don’t forget about the body.
Quiet the analytic police. There is no right/wrong way to be an analyst.
Have an interesting conversation.
Be slightly anxious but not too much.
Read. Journals, books, blogs, The New Yorker. Stay current. Be aware of what’s happening in the culture and in the field.
Get supervision. Start a peer group. Join a reading group.
Enjoy the work. It is the most meaningful work there is.  

 

Jim Traub, LCSW:

Sullivan says somewhere that the supply of advice far outweighs the demand for it. But I’ll give it a shot.

General preparation for being a psychoanalyst involves developing curiosity about one’s experience and relationships. In addition to the usual attention to your family history, romantic experience, and obsessional ruminations, you must follow your seemingly random, trivial, irrational thoughts and feelings and your dream life. Also important is reading fiction and poetry to have an immediate experience of life as lived by others. Listening to music gives one a sense of rhythm and mood. The wider the analyst’s experience and the broader his/her/their frame of reference, the better.

In doing the work, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the potential significance of everything that happens in the room and the impossibility of tracking it all. Letting yourself get caught up by whatever grabs your attention and then becoming aware of all that you aren’t attending to is an expectable pattern. Frustration and confusion are common, too. But it’s a great privilege and a pleasure and a pain to hear about people’s lives.  

 

Tony Bass, Ph.D.:

You will grow as an analyst throughout your long career, and love your work more and more if you embrace the deepening knowledge of yourself that comes with knowing others deeply. That has been my experience in forty years of practicing analytic therapy.

Erwin Singer (1977) wrote that “he who chances to expose himself by hearing truly his fellow’s anguish and ecstasy can hope to be met equally exposed by him. In any genuine meeting, both participants stand equally bared before each other” (p. 190). In this kind of mutual baring, and bearing of ourselves, a requirement for the creative work of psychoanalysis, we must come to know ourselves no less, even more, than we come to know our patients.

Goethe (as cited in Singer, 1977, p. 181) wrote, “If thou wouldst know what poets felt / In poets’ lands thou must have dwelt.” Poets have much to teach us about knowing feelings and living in the land of the unconscious. Like poets, analysts dwell there as best we can. Our own unconscious is the underground stream that, if we dare to follow it, leads us to another’s, which we follow back to a different place in our own. The more we do that, in each session and with each new patient, the wider and deeper the territory we come to know. Rilke (1986) wrote to his young poet mentee, “Always trust yourself and your own feeling… if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights” (p. 23).

And then, “think… of the world that you carry inside you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning toward a future of your own – only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive around you” (Rilke, 1986, p. 56).

His advice to the poet is the same I would offer you: “Be attentive to what is arising within you.” You will find that something different will arise in you with every patient. Listen carefully. What you hear will have much to tell you about the patient who sits before you, and, equally, about yourself.

 

 

References

Koch, K. (2005). One train may hide another. In The collected poems of kenneth koch (pp. 441-442). New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Rilke, R.M. (1986). Letters to a young poet. New York, NY: Random House.

Singer, E. (1977). The fiction of analytic anonymity. In K. Frank (Ed.), The human dimension in psychoanalytic practice (pp. 181-192). New York, NY: Grune & Stratton.    

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this post, we recommend:

The Psychoanalytic Community: MIP Candidates Speak by Justine Duhr, MFA
The Psychoanalytic Community: My Post-Graduation Life at the Manhattan Institute by Blair Casdin, LCSW