The Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute can boast of an impressive “first” as Kehinde A. Ayeni last June became the state's—and country's—first Nigerian psychoanalyst to graduate from an APsaA training institute.
As someone who trained with and then shared the graduation platform with Ayeni, it is my honor and pleasure to tell you about her and to highlight her many accomplishments.
Born and raised in the city of Ibadan, Nigeria, and educated there as a public health physician, Ayeni, along with her former husband (also a physician), then emigrated to the United States in 1993 with their young children, Segilola and Mobolaji. Both were looking for residency training opportunities. Ayeni entered a residency program in psychiatry at Wayne State University/Detroit Medical Center. She graduated in 1999 and was awarded the Harry E. August Award for Outstanding Performance in Psychiatry Residency.
Ayeni wants to return yearly to Nigeria with the hopes of establishing the first training facility to teach psychoanalytic psychotherapy to psychiatric residents.
Ayeni credits her early professional experiences as a public health physician in Nigeria for deeply influencing her eventual career choice as a psychiatrist. In Nigeria, rather than work in an urban office, she took six-month assignments living among rural villagers, teaching them preventive health practices and basic hygiene that included digging latrines and wells. This meant working with largely illiterate people, most of whom were deeply suspicious of anyone they considered a “government official.” There, Ayeni experienced in vivo the nature of resistance to change and group defense structures—and how to successfully work with these defenses.
Fast forward to the U.S. where, when I first met Ayeni in 2001, she was an attending psychiatrist for the High Intervention Program at Detroit Receiving Hospital. At the hospital, I observed firsthand her calm, emphatic style and deep sensitivity as she worked with very sick patients, many of whom were homeless. Today, she continues to work with chronically ill patients at a Detroit clinic while maintaining her private practice in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Farmington Hills. Ayeni finds the combination of practicing both psychiatry and psychoanalysis deeply satisfying and feels the two professional disciplines continue to complement and inform each other. “What I like best about my work is helping troubled patients tell their story—to have the story finally come together and make sense.”
Family has always been vitally important to Ayeni. During her psychoanalytic training graduation speech, she noted the powerful influence of her beloved grandmother—a woman born in 1900 at the time of the British colonization of Nigeria and a time of great upheaval for the country. Although Grandmother, who lived into her 80s, did not possess a Western education, she recognized its profound significance for future generations. Among her own children, Ayeni says, “In Grandmother's town of about 50,000 people, she produced the first medical doctor, lawyer, and nurse. Her lawyer daughter also was the first Nigerian to obtain a doctorate in tort law.” As a child, Ayeni recalls attending many graduation ceremonies of extended family and friends, noting that Grandmother never failed to make use of these occasions to include “a hefty dose of lectures about the doom and calamity that would befall any one of us who refused to go to college, or at least acquire a skill.”
In 2006, Ayeni published her first novel, Our Mothers' Sore Expectations, about the experiences of women living under dictatorship in Nigeria. Ayeni commented that writing the book was very therapeutic for her as it was “my way of mourning for my country of origin and of integrating my experiences,” as she established her life in America. Ayeni has honored her grandmother's tradition of supporting the efforts of others to obtain a formal education. She has used proceeds from the sale of her book to establish the Foundation for Indigenous Development and Advocacy (), a non-profit organization dedicated to helping Nigerian children obtain a minimum elementary school education. To date, her foundation has assisted five families with financial help for tuition, books, and uniforms for their children.
What does the future hold for Ayeni? As her younger child nears college, Ayeni plans to continue to develop her private practice and her involvement at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. She also speaks of a dearly held dream—as a dual citizen of the U.S. and Nigeria, Ayeni wants to return yearly to Nigeria with the hopes of establishing the first training facility to teach psychoanalytic psychotherapy to psychiatric residents. Such training does not exist in Nigeria today. Given Ayeni's impressive drive and determination, keep posted for further developments.
Laura A. Huggler, Ph.D., practices adult psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in West Bloomfield, Michigan. She is a psychoanalytically-informed organizational consultant and is co-chair of APsaA's Committee on Corporate and Organizational Consultation. She can be reached at (248-592-9436).