In anticipation of the Manhattan Institute’s first ever Roundtable Discussion on Psychoanalytic Training colloquium on January 11, 2019, the blog co-editors surveyed the community with a couple of questions:

“Please tell us in a paragraph why you decided to become an analyst and one thing you learned from your training that you still refer to in your work today.”

We heard from many institute members: founders, former co-directors, faculty, graduates, and candidates alike. The answers are as diverse as the many voices that make up our psychoanalytic community.

Jim Traub, LCSW:
I became an analyst because psychoanalysis had helped me as a patient. Also I thought I might be good at it. And I would be able to control my schedule (not really, as it turned out). I’d tried to be an actor and was an English teacher. Both activities involved curiosity about human motivation and behavior and so it felt like becoming an analyst was a continuation of my interests—though that may be a retrospective effort to make sense of a long and winding road. As for what I refer to today, I’m still trying to better apply the method of working in the transference/countertransference.

Kathryn Moreno, LCAT-Limited Permit, ATR-Provisional:
In my art therapy master’s program, I learned that psychoanalytic theories are not only fascinating, but also profoundly and powerfully human. I decided to pursue becoming an analyst because I value a way of thinking and approaching treatment that resists manualization, respects complexity, and emphasizes experience. Something I am still learning and practicing is how to listen to and through content, theory, experience, metaphor, and my body.

Irwin Hirsch, PhD:
While an undergraduate at Baruch College between 1958 and 1962, a number of my psychology professors were analytically trained or had some exposure to psychoanalytic thinking. They all seemed so comfortable with themselves, so free to talk about anything, most certainly about sex. These were very conservative times in our culture and I wanted to be as uninhibited and relaxed as they were. I had the illusion that these guys (all were men) were totally free of the sundry neuroses that plagued me and if I pursued a career in psychoanalysis I would be like them in this respect. As anyone who knows me can see, I have achieved this (said with humor).

What I most carry with me from my training is the core principle that any therapeutic process, by definition, consists of a relationship between two thoroughly subjective and flawed co-participants. Indeed, as Racker has famously said, the psychoanalytic relationship is not one between a sick patient and a well therapist, following Sullivan, we are all more simply human than otherwise.

Blair Casdin, LCSW-R:
It was always my plan to do psychoanalytic training at some point after graduating from NYU, but life kept getting in the way. I ended up in California, in the land of CBT/DBT (which I still utilize in my practice!). Working in hospitals and clinics, where stays are short, treatment plans dominate, and decisions are made quickly, took me further away from psychoanalytic thinking. And then I found myself back in New York at JBFCS, carpooling with Fran Novak who was in his second year at MIP, hearing all about his training and feeling the envy slowly build. I knew I needed to do something that would enliven my work again because I was heading down the path to burnout. Fran, my dear friend still, gave me that gentle nudge that I needed and I’ve never looked back!

As for my training, I recall the wise words of my supervisor, Susan Obrecht, in our final session: maintain analytic neutrality and always be curious. So simple, so true!

Marcus Silverman, MA, LP, NCPsyA:
I think I originally intended to become an analyst because my mentor in undergrad, a philosophy professor, told me that psychoanalysis was the only way to make decent money while continuing to study philosophy. Over the course of training I suspect my intention changed and evolved many times, but training and analysis revealed to me a desire I long had to keep people’s secrets, to provide space for people to attempt to be their truest selves, to champion the process of saying the bravest thing, or the ugly thing, or the difficult thing—and that the space that psychoanalysts are perfectly suited to provide is exceedingly rare, and all sorts of people can and do respond to that space when we make it available to them.

Of the many things I learned in training, I find myself most often thinking about Bion’s wish to approach each hour without “desire, memory, or understanding”—I think the capacity to be with people exactly where they are, without layering my desire over their person, is what remains elusive, rewarding and liberating about our work, and points to a healing, upbuilding way of being with other people and being with ourselves that has saved me, or changed my life in an irrevocable way.

Stay tuned for more answers in Why Did You Become a Psychoanalyst? Part II!

Join us for our next colloquium, More Simply Clinical Than Otherwise: A Roundtable Discussion on Psychoanalytic Training, with Sandra Buechler, PhD, Steve Kirschner, LCSW, and Jamieson Webster, PhD

Friday, January 11, at 8 p.m.

NYU Kimmel Center 60 Washington Square South at La Guardia Place ROOM #808

For 2 CEUs, please make $40 payment HERE
To attend without CEUs, suggested $20 at the door; please RSVP HERE

If you enjoyed this post, we recommend:
Why Psychoanalysis? by Irwin Hirsch, PhD