You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
It will never be easy to learn to do psychotherapy. To teach it is even more difficult, if that is possible. The variety of problems presented by the patients, by their lives, and by the interaction of personalities between therapist and patient or between therapist and supervisor, is virtually unlimited. These relationships are susceptible to many interpretations depending on the individuals, goals, and frames of reference involved. This communication is offered in the hope that it may be stimulating and present practical help to future students and other instructors in programs similar to that from which these observations are derived.
Since 1950 members of the staff of the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Clinic have supervised the psychotherapy of selected patients treated by the resident physicians of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Five supervisors are currently active in the program, all of whom received their analytic training at Columbia. The members of the group have had from four to eight years of practical and teaching experience, and the majority of them also function as training analysts.
The backgrounds of the residents and their experience are heterogeneous. When they begin supervised work, most of them have had no previous training in psychotherapy beyond their exposure to patients in medical school, which varies considerably from one school to another. Their theoretical framework is frequently meager. A number of the men in training are foreign students who are in this country on an exchange basis or on fellowships. They have had little opportunity to learn psychotherapy in their native countries and are often handicapped by a language barrier. It is estimated that more than half of the residents are undergoing analysis while in training or plan to do so, whether or not they participate in a formal program of analytic teaching.
From two to four residents attend a weekly supervisory conference lasting two hours. At the beginning of supervis