It is often said that many recently graduated psychoanalysts start to feel lost and disconnected from local and national psychoanalytic organizations. They recognize that the structure offered to them as candidates, while constraining, nonetheless provided a certain guidance and safety. They struggle to find new links and connections that would help them to consolidate their identity as successful psychoanalysts who enjoy what they do both in the office and beyond. In this article I will share my own experiences since I graduated in 1996 and discuss possibilities about what we can do as recent graduates to deepen our ties to our colleagues and organizations, as well as to the world beyond the psychoanalytic world.
I believe the basic nidus around which all the other layers of my identity as a psychoanalyst are laid is my clinical work. This is obviously first and foremost why I became an analyst. When I leave my office at the end of a day of seeing patients whose lives have become woven into the fabric of my own life over years of tears and laughter, good times and bad, as we struggle to understand who they are, what they do to themselves and others and why, I realize that from each such interaction with my patients, and in analyzing their thoughts and feelings, I have learned more about my own thoughts and feelings. However, I have also learned over the past few years that, in spite of my love for my work, I was slowly but surely trying to keep down the number of analytic patients in my practice after I graduated. This, of course, was initially neither planned nor conscious.
I became aware of the problem more than couple of years after my graduation, as a friend and I sat together one early spring day in Michigan sipping steaming cups of coffee, mulling over our respective analytic practices. I realized that although I was seeing six patients in psychoanalytic treatment (five at five times a week and one at four times a week), none were patients whom I had evaluated fresh and started in analysis since graduating. Two of my psychotherapy patients had “converted” to psychoanalytic treatment since I graduated, but why hadn't new patients whom I had evaluated start psychoanalysis with me? For some reason, I had ended up seeing all of these new patients in two- or three-times-a-week psychotherapy.
I gradually realized that I had actually recommended analysis to suitable patients more enthusiastically and with greater confidence before I graduated than I did after my graduation. What a curious and interesting state of affairs! The reasons for this were multiple, of course, and were related to several anxieties about what graduating and functioning independently as a successful analyst represented for me. It was an important reminder that before I viewed the world as being full of “unanalyzable (by me) referrals” I might gain by looking inside myself one more time, and then again.
Teaching. I found that, in addition to clinical work, teaching analytic theory and technique, in both formal and informal ways, further helped me to develop a more solid identity as a psychoanalyst. Soon after graduation I was pleasantly surprised to receive an invitation to apply for faculty status at our institute. My previous teaching in local residency programs as well as within the extension division of the institute while I was a candidate proved very helpful for me, both personally and while applying for faculty status. I started to teach candidates the year after I graduated, and this helped me enormously in terms of feeling more integrated with other faculty members.
Committee work. Committee work, although often taking up precious evening or weekend time, nonetheless is important for recent graduates. It allows us to move beyond the arena of clinical work and teaching into learning more about the running of our institutes and societies. I deepened my commitment to some committees with which I had been involved as a candidate and began fresh work with others after I graduated. I tried to limit my involvement to committees to which I felt I could genuinely contribute, and I did not find any barriers to greater involvement.
Institutes and societies obviously need to value the recent graduate's enthusiasm and potential for hard work. I believe that sensible institutes and societies are sensitive to the idea that shared power ultimately allows a greater distribution of work and more rewards for all concerned. I became especially interested in the work of setting up in our society a new category of membership locally for graduate level students. This project, initially proposed by Marvin Margolis and strongly supported in Michigan by David Dietrich and Michael Miletic, has now gained a strong footing in Michigan, where we maintain a yearly membership of fifty-plus graduate-level students and trainees for whom we provide mentorship and other benefits. These young people are now regular visitors to our psychoanalytic center, both attending our regular programs and participating in special ones arranged for them.
I chair a committee devoted to this work (which essentially involves encouraging students and trainees interested in analytic work to step out of their academic programs and come together as a group at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Center). I also chair a liaison committee to training programs in town (the purpose of which is to provide analytic training within academic and training programs). In addition, I serve on the Admissions Committee of the institute, the Faculty Executive Committee, the Patient and Colleague Assistance Committee, the Fundraising Committee, and the Committee for the Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis. This work takes a few evenings a month, an occasional weekend, and quite a bit of time on the telephone. Within the context of my marriage, and with a young daughter to raise, I feel it is sufficient — Not so much that it takes time away from my family, but enough to keep me excited about being part of a vital psychoanalytic institute and society.
Outreach to the community. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of involvement in community events, especially for recent graduates. Pro bono teaching, even a handful of times a year, speaking at community events as requested, helping to connect patients to appropriate referrals, and talking about the application of analytic ideas to daily events as I interact with people on a day-to-day basis have all helped me to integrate my work as an analyst with the world around me. I find that this keeps me from feeling isolated in my office. Such work in the community is rewarded with meaningful relationships and with referrals.
As a candidate I was a member of the Committee on Racial and Ethnic Diversity of the American. As an immigrant analyst the work of CORED obviously had important meaning for me. As I developed a student's association in Michigan I was asked to join the American's Committee on Student Associates, and I recently became one of its co-chairs, with the aim of helping more and more societies start student membership categories locally, then encouraging these members to become members of the American's Student Associates program as well. Our hope is that our national meetings will then start to bring together young
people interested in analytic ideas. Whatever they may do in the future, we will have helped them to better understand themselves and others, and in the process we will have gained valuable friends and allies.
This past spring I became a member of the Committee on Societies, another venue for learning more about what my colleagues are doing, and struggling with, in different societies across the country.
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Both in terms of clinical work as well as involvement in analytic organizations locally and nationally, the extent of my involvement since graduation has been limited only by myself. I am well aware that I have described above simply a personal experience, which may be similar to or very different from that of other recent graduates. It would be useful to learn more about this from other colleagues who have recently graduated so that if there are problems in significant areas, discussion might lead to some resolution of those problems. With a newer openness at the level of both local institutes and societies, as well as at the level of the American today, there is so much for recent graduates to be involved in that the size of the “black hole” into which recent graduates may mythically disappear might soon be inversely proportional to our understanding of what we may be doing to keep ourselves aloof and isolated.