The mentorship program associated with the APsaA Fellowship needs your help to expand its vital mission of promoting and nurturing interest in psychoanalytic practice and theory. We are looking for analysts and psychodynamic psychotherapists willing to meet with early-career mentees once per month, from September to June, to discuss psychoanalysis and to help them develop their understanding of its theory and practice. The rewards of donating your time, as past mentors attest, come from being a vital part of the mentee's learning experience and from sharing what you know with someone less experienced but eager to learn. You will also be able to help this next generation of clinicians and researchers become more fluent in psychodynamic thinking so they, in turn, might contribute to its advancement and dissemination.
One of the more original and forward-thinking aspects of APsaA's Fellowship program is that it offers mentorship to every qualified applicant for the fellowship—not just to fellowship winners. While the majority of applicants come from psychiatry and psychology, there are also applicants from social work, academia and other disciplines who would like guidance in a variety of areas, including reading analytic theory, conducting and evaluating research, treating patients, planning careers, and assessing whether they can or should pursue analytic training.
The mentorship program allows you the freedom to devise an individual plan of study with your mentee that will advance her or his clinical and/or research interests. Many mentees want to know more about the career trajectory of mentors and are eager to discuss challenging clinical issues. Some past mentors have pursued a program of reading analytic works of mutual interest. Still other mentors have introduced mentees to other analysts with shared clinical or research interests, or helped them become involved in local, psychoanalytically-oriented programs. Some mentorship pairs have even engaged in research and written papers together. In a survey of recent mentors, they highlighted the enthusiasm and eagerness of their mentees and how gratifying it was to contribute to the future of psychoanalysis. One mentor put it this way:
It is very enjoyable getting to know these talented, interesting clinicians/researchers early in their careers. They are hungry for helpful connections, especially given the anti-analytic atmosphere in many training programs or early career jobs. It is a way to offer your own connections and your own experiences, to help the mentee think through clinical or career problems.
Over the years the Fellowship has been quite successful in attracting applicants from around the country, including areas that are not well populated by other analysts. This is exciting because it indicates the breadth of interest in psychoanalysis, but it is also challenging because it can be difficult to find mentors in some of these regions. While we are eager to have more mentors from the northeast corridor and the west coast, we are especially eager to find mentors
in all the other regions of the country. Skype mentorship is always an option, but even when that is the principal means of contact, we prefer to have the mentor and mentee as geographically close as possible to enhance the potential for inperson meetings, even if only once, and for introducing the mentee to the mentor's analytic network. Members of the Fellowship Committee are always ready to help mentors with general questions about the mentorship process or with specific issues that may arise. We want you to feel supported as you support APsaA's efforts to encourage the next generation to become more engaged in psychoanalytic thinking and practice.
We do hope you will think seriously about becoming a mentor for APsaA. Try it for one year and see how you like it.
As Harriet Wolfe, a former co-chair of the Fellowship Committee and now APsaA president, underscores, “The one-on-one relationship with an experienced, analytically-oriented clinician deepens mentees' knowledge of psychoanalysis and furthers their identification with the profession, which helps all of us. The Fellowship Committee and APsaA need and greatly appreciate those who volunteer their time for the mentorship program and hope we can welcome more of you to join in this mutually rewarding experience.”
To volunteer to be a mentor, please contact Lynne Zeavin, chair of the Fellowship Committee, at .