Hopes and fears in a sample of trainees: Considerations and perspectives

Abstract

This paper investigates hopes and fears connected with work as an analytic psychotherapist, in a sample of trainees attending the Italian Training School for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (SPP). Candidates were asked to complete a questionnaire with open-ended questions. In the first analysis, we found trainees to be interested in learning an effective therapeutic method to treat patients. Their wish was for a serious, demanding, but nonjudgmental training, which could support the development of both a thoughtful way of using their thinking process and a rigorous clinical method, while respecting their individuality and personality. We asked our candidates whether theoretical concepts and issues related to the analytic method effectively helped them transform difficulties in perspectives. Theoretical tendencies and authors considered to be useful in modern clinical areas such as Internet addiction disorders, Hikikomori (severe social and relational retirement in adolescence), children's school problems, and problems connected with dimensions of parenthood (e.g. LGBT parenting) were explored. A sense of inadequacy when first dealing with difficult clinical situations, and fears about the realistic difficulties of psychotherapy as a trade, today, in Italy, were found. Considerations on the psychoanalytic educational program and on the importance of workgroups were proposed.