Reverie on Becoming an Analyst

This paper is a brief reverie and free association about my experience of becoming an analyst and a small slice of what I learned along the way and is told in a series of images. It was originally read out loud.

I had been working on a very busy team at the hospital, working with families in crisis, and teaching part time and running a busy private practice.

I wanted to train because sometimes during sessions with patients, or while teaching and supervising, I felt that I had hit a ceiling in my ability to understand what was going on with the patient and the process. I always resonated with and learned from the analysts I worked with—they were the ones who spoke words of wisdom. Words of wisdom that I valued while working in a system that was becoming more and more unwilling to deal with the mess of families in crisis and the long-term holding that they required. I worried about the way we were medicating children while avoiding helping parents to tune in and listen, to change, to deal with their ghosts and their traumas that in many ways their children were holding for them.

But when I started the training I had given birth to my second child and was still breastfeeding. I was tired.

First Year

The first image I have of the process is of a woman's legs running … Mine.

Myself running: running to class at the institute, running to teach at the university, running to see a patient, running to pick up my son from day-care, running to supervision at 7:45 in the morning, and just once please let me make it on time.

The second image I have is breastfeeding my son with a flashlight under my chin while reading Joseph Sandler's paper “Role Responsiveness.”

I felt I was running while juggling.

Taking on more private patients to pay for my analysis, and teaching more courses, yet trying to remember to keep spaces open for control cases.

I felt pulled in many different directions.