Learning to Learn, Learning to Teach

The aspect of psychoanalytic supervision that I would like to address is that of learning—or, to be more accurate, not learning. I think of it as the gulf between knowing something in the head, or even by heart, and having it in one's bones, available for use. As I tried to learn from my supervisors throughout my training, I experienced this dichotomy week after week, month after month, for years. The lesson of one particular supervision highlighted it for me. When I was finally able to integrate that lesson into the very fabric of the supervision, my understanding evolved to the point that I began to solve my riddle. My subsequent discussions with residents and medical students suggested that the lesson's message had broadened my perspective on both sides of the supervisory equation.

When I began to work with patients in analytic training, I recognized feelings from my first experiences as a psychotherapist. Difficulties from those early days reappeared as well. They now seemed all the more pronounced for the loss of grounding once afforded by the face-to-face arrangement, all the more documented by the detailed notes