Teaching and Transformation: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Psychotherapeutic Training

Abstract

While there has been much recent interest in the impact of organizational structures underpinning psychotherapeutic training (e.g. Davies 2008;Kernberg 2006), there has been curiously little interest in the impact of interpersonal dynamics on the process of teaching psychotherapy. In this paper, I draw on my experience as a university lecturer and tutor on a postgraduate counselling and psychotherapy training programme to explore some of the unconscious dynamics underpinning the psychotherapy trainee's development towards a mature professional identity. The implicit expectations that trainee psychotherapists hold at the start of their training are initially discussed; I then turn to psychoanalytic writers such as Bollas, Winnicott and Jessica Benjamin in an attempt to articulate and explore how trainees may progress from relating, to constructive use of their tutors in their quest for personal transformation and professional recognition.

From trainee to trainer: crossing over to the other side of the fence

“…Rather than being able to contain our emotions and conceptualise these incidents with students as a consequence of unconscious dynamics that we now understand are characteristic of relationships between trainee and trainer (Lowenthal & Snell, 2006;Rizq, 2009), we personalised the comments and consequently our confidence plummeted. We then found ourselves regressing defensively into criticising the institution and our mentors for 'not looking after us' in the face of this barrage of personal criticism.…”

“…The absence of a solid frame, we argue, is particularly detrimental for inexperienced staff, in that we have little to anchor us in the face of the trainees' extreme anxiety and disillusionment, which, as mentioned earlier, can be experienced as projective identifications (Rizq, 2006(Rizq, , 2009. In return, as discussed earlier and as Rizq (2009) suggests, we may project our own insecurities and anxieties onto the trainees Á something that is all the more likely to occur in our experience when the frame is not robust enough to help us contain and self-monitor. In a sense, the absence of the frame as the holding environment (Winnicott, 1953) means that we cannot hope to contain the might of trainees' projections, to bear them and facilitate their transformation into something that is manageable for the trainee.…”

“…Training as a therapeutic practitioner can be beneficial, both personally and professionally (Johns, 1996;Wilkins, 1997), yet the challenges and demands of the training course for student therapists have also been well documented (Jensen, 1995;Kumary & Baker, 2008;Pica, 1998;Skovholt & Ronnestad, 2003;Truell, 2001). In recent years, discussions have aptly started to consider the role of the trainer on psychotherapeutic training courses with a specific focus on the many inter-and intrapersonal dynamic processes that occur within the traineeÁtrainer dyad (Lowenthal & Snell, 2006;Rizq, 2006Rizq, , 2007Rizq, , 2009. In this article we aim to contribute to this field of interest by discussing our experiences of transitioning from trainee to trainer on therapeutic training programmes and the significant challenges that such a process entails.…”

“…Additionally, through the process of analysing the transition we have made, we have quickly recognised the many parallels that exist between our experience as trainees, as trainers and as therapists. This article elucidates some of these parallels in more detail and uses Rizq's (2009) developmental framework and psychodynamic concepts to theorise about our experience of 'crossing over to the other side of the fence'. We also aim to provide a response to Rizq's 'central question of the projections and phantasies that we as psychotherapeutic tutors have of our trainees which are just as likely to impact powerfully on the teaching relationship ' (2009, p. 377, emphasis in original).…”

Symbiotic Harmony: The Realistic Way to Develop Teacher-Student Relationship in University

“…If consider that the management system is the external cause of the fusion development of teacher-student relationship, the spiritual emotion is the internal reason of reaching correlation dependence of them [10]. German existentialist philosopher, Karl Theodora Jaspers, regards that education is different from training; training is a kind of activity of spiritual isolation, while the education is the activity of spiritual agreement and cultural transmission.…”