Some Problems Involved in Professionalizing Social Interaction: The Case of Psychotherapeutic Training

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the learning of psychotherapeutic skills from our observations of the training of first-year psychiatric residents in one specific hospital. This description reflects our conception of the requisite set of skills which any fully formed, presumably competent psychotherapist is expected to master in order to be accredited as a "finished product," i.e., a real professional. We identify some sources of strain involved in the first-year residents' attempts to master these particular skills, and we suggest that much of the tension experienced can be ascribed to the discrepancies between the resident's pre-training orientation towards "normal everyday" social interaction and the new demands posed by psychotherapeutic interaction. We also specify some of the adaptive strategies contemplated by residents as they come to question the efficacy of this skill system. In general, our attempt is to clarify the nature of psychotherapeutic skills and to discuss the way they serve as a pivotal point of reference for organizing the socialization experiences of first-year psychiatric residents.