Epilogue: New Psychoanalysts Speak – Reflections on Personal and Professional Transformations

Hillman and Rosenblatt (2018) assembled a collection of essays from 12, established and well-known psychoanalysts, wherein contributors reflect years later on the process of their respective journeys to finding a true-to-self analytic voice and inner narrative. In particular, these analysts write about personal and life experiences that led them to discover their “own differentiated voice” and “raise the question of what kind of institution maximizes the potential for this kind of development” (p. 199). In contrast, the contributors to this issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry are newly established or establishing and lesser-known psychoanalysts, who, also speak eloquently about their recent journeys each to finding a contemporary analytic voice grounded in lived experience. Several themes emerge from the narratives of these newly minted psychoanalysts.

First, each contributor either explicitly or implicitly communicated that their training programs for the most part nourished their ongoing development as psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic thinkers. While some described disappointments with supervisors and others realized that their institute was not as sensitive as they thought it should or could be to issues of cultural and racial marginalization. Overall, as candidates they neither reported having to overcome exclusionary criteria (Holmes, 2018) nor enduring frankly abusive treatment by faculty in order to graduate (Rachman, 2021). Instead, these new analysts (Kathy Monroy, Debra Myers, Rochelle Broder, Ruth Migler, John Paddock, and Shirley Malove) write movingly about the warmth, support, and encouragement they received from their personal and training analysts, faculty, and colleagues – sometimes in the face of life-changing tragedy – to identify, nurture, embrace, and cherish their own analytic outlook and voice. Sandra Hershberg writes from the perspective of being a Director of Psychoanalytic Training to share her ideas about the process of becoming a psychoanalys