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“Being Railroaded: A Candidate’s Struggle to Stay on Track” won NIP’s prestigious annual Educators Award in 2011. In it, the author, Matt Aibel, describes in an open and forthcoming manner his struggle to find his own subjectivity and voice while immersed in clinical work with a very personally challenging patient. Writing toward the end of his formal training, Aibel describes a period familiar to many serious students of the analytic process as he grapples with alternative formulations and tries to sort out what makes the most theoretical and practical sense for him with this patient. His “fumbling” (as he experienced it) reflects considerable sophistication and thoughtfulness.
In the end, Aibel finds a relatively comfortable position, concluding, “It is possible to retain my subjectivity while providing a responsive but non-intruding space in which a patient can safely elaborate his experience in a manner that helps him come into being on his own terms.” He seems to have found the shared space, so crucial between analysand and analyst, that promotes each of the partners’ free self-expression and feeling of being understood—an important form of analytic intimacy. For the moment, Aibel has moved toward framing a way of working that is at least partially stabilizing for him and that provides the conditions he believes are necessary to promote his patient’s growth. What happened is what had to happen; at another time in either of these individuals’ lives, the clinical experience would be co-created quite differently.
Aibel’s paper exemplifies a conscientious analytic candidate’s intellectual and emotional struggle to master the personal challenges of a professional career as a psychoanalyst. The committee and the institute are proud to present it.