Unique Partnership Helps Korean Analyst Achieve U.S. Graduation

Jaehak Yu and the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center recently celebrated Yu's graduation from the Psychoanalyst Training Program of the center. His odyssey is an unusual one, involving extraordinary sacrifices by him and his family and an unusual partnership of the center with University Hospitals Department of Psychiatry (UH), the American Psychoanalytic Association, and the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA).

Yu lives in Seoul, South Korea, where he grew up and received medical and psychiatric training. Contacts with the Korean Study Group of the IPA, a group dedicated to developing psychoanalytic training in South Korea, stimulated his interest in training. Robert Tyson of San Diego, one of the IPA group, was especially encouraging and through him Yu inquired about training in Cleveland as well as at other centers. Complicating the proposed training was the requirement that he have simultaneous additional training in psychiatry in the U.S. At that time. Yu was struggling with English and his familiarity with the U.S. and with psychiatric practice here was limited.

Today he is the director of the psychiatry department at Konkuk University Hospital and active in both psychiatric and psychoanalytic development in Korea.

The Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center was interested. We saw unusual abilities and strengths suggested by Yu's previous psychiatric experience, the extent and dedication of the work he had already done with the IPA, and the determination we noted in our preliminary interviews. But Yu also needed a strong U.S. program of psychiatric training and a source of income. We sought the help of the Department of Psychiatry of Cleveland's University Hospitals. Robert Ronis, then training director, was creatively helpful. He arranged the residency and the funding that enabled Yu and his family to come to Cleveland.

Yu arrived in July 1997, accompanied by his wife Eunmee and their two children, Jeeyoon, then 7 years old, and Jeeho, 4 years old. The family agrees that those early months of cultural and language adjustment were the most difficult part of the experience. Improving their language skills (easier for the children than for the adults), starting his analysis, beginning a repeat psychiatric residency, and starting psychoanalytic classes and seminars required a tremendous amount of work and emotional energy. But, as his American teachers have come to know and respect, Yu not only shoulders burdens without complaint but, struggling against the odds, turns them into notable successes.

Yu's psychoanalytic training progressed well. He completed his residency at UH and went on to postdoctoral specialty training in child psychiatry and addiction psychiatry. His course work in psychoanalysis progressed and he took his first training case. In June 2002, with completion of his analytic didactic work and psychiatric training, he and his family returned to Seoul.

A new phase of his training began. He worked in a large psychiatric hospital in Seoul where he was required to see his psychoanalytic patients outside of regular work hours, early in the morning or in the evening. Beginning at 6 a.m., he worked till 10 p.m. through most of the next five years, keeping in touch with Cleveland through two to three times a week telephone supervision, attending conferences in Cleveland through a telephone hookup over the weekend, and coming to Cleveland for further seminars, supervision, and case presentations each year. He also continued training activities with the IPA group both in Korea and the United States.

His reputation and responsibilities in Korea rapidly increased. Today he is the director of the psychiatry department at Konkuk University Hospital and active in both psychiatric and psychoanalytic development in Korea. There are few fully trained analysts in Korea; presently three are recognized by the IPA, not yet enough to establish a training facility there. Yet the clamor by young psychiatrists for personal analysis and for didactic training in analytic psychotherapy is enormous; 15 are graduated each year from an introductory psychoanalytic psychotherapy course, taught in part by the trained analysts and in part by others with partial training.

In the summer of 2005, Yu's skills as a clinician were examined and recognized by the IPA, according him full status as an active member of the IPA. Although accredited by the IPA, he chose to continue his work with the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center so that he would graduate from an APsaA training program. He fulfilled our requirements and achieved active membership in APsaA in January 2007.

An additional benefit of the long and productive association between Yu and his analytic supervisors at the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center is a profound awareness of the similarity of the human condition in American and Korean analysands, the universality of conflicts of sexuality and aggression, and the psychological toll of anxiety and depression in both cultures that surround experiences of abandonment, loneliness, injury, shame, and guilt. Though the culture and language of the two countries are different, the content of these analyses, the defensive operations, conflicts, and transference-countertransference reactions are very similar, though often more immediately evident in Korea, reflecting a culture less steeped in psychoanalytic clichés. Much of this wisdom has been shared during Yu's once or twice a year visits to Cleveland when he presents his ongoing cases to the faculty and candidates of the center.

This unusual relationship has benefited all involved: Yu, the Cleveland Center, the Korean Psychoanalytic Study Group, APsaA, and IPA, and, not least, his patients and students in Seoul.