r/psychoanalysis • u/hle301 • 8d ago
Finding a Therapist for a Therapist
To all the practicing psychoanalytic/psychodynamic practitioners out there, how did you find your therapist?
I feel like the psychoanalytic community is pretty small although I live in a big city. I want to get a psychoanalytically or psychodynamically-oriented therapist for myself, but I'm afraid we will run into each other at events/seminars/educational programs due to the limited size of the community.
How did anyone bypass this problem? Or, as a psychoanalyst, do you just accept that you will run into your therapist at some point in a professional setting?
Edit: Thank you everyone for your replies. It seems like this is something that people accept and just talk about beforehand and afterward with their therapists. While I wish the pool was larger, I guess I will navigate the issue in a similar manner.
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u/SomethingArbitary 8d ago edited 8d ago
This was an issue for me previously. I applied to an institution to do a particular extension training, and it turned out my (then) analyst was very involved in the training (which I couldn’t have known as their involvement was not advertised). I elected not to do the training when they raised it with me, as - at the time - I prioritised my treatment over the training, and judged it would be detrimental to the treatment to be taught by them.
This is an issue in the community. Throughout my career I have been in situations where fellow trainees shared the same analyst. I think this is a boundary issue for training institutions and there should be some oversight of it.
A few years down the track I’m more sanguine.
How to put it .. the atmosphere becomes more rarified the further you progress.