The Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis

Date: May 16 2012
Major: Psychology (This Major's Salary over time)
The Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis gave me a start in Psychoanalysis, a career that requires life-long training. I did both the Master's degree (which prepared me for two licenses, the LMHC and LADC1)and Doctorate. The work I did in both programs was very serious, and for this, I surrounded myself with competent instructors who were very valuable both in my clinical training as well as my research. The institute, which is more of a professional school than anything else, prepared me to work with seriously disturbed patients in inpatient and outpatient settings, and across diagnostic categories. The work that I put into it is what I got out of it. I did not have any difficulty finding work at any point: having graduated with my masters I began working as a clinician in the outpatient unit of a prestigious city hospital where I quickly became supervisor, and finalizing my doctorate started and directed a partial hospital program at another hospital in town, where I stayed on for five years. I found my work was greatly valued by colleagues and those I supervised. During this time I held a private practice on the side and am now doing that full-time. My training helped me sustain an interest in a complicated field that is out of favor in much of psychiatric society today, but is no less important and valued by those seeking in depth, long term treatment. My training helped me publish papers in scholarly journals and teach as an adjunct instructor at a foreign institute where I lecture once a year. There were problems in my training, as there are in any institute; psychoanalytic institutes anywhere in the world, where deep emotional involvement with peers and instructors is essential to learning, will always have strange dynamics that test student's level of comfort. In my experience, however, if one is objective, can learn without necessarily becoming a "follower" to any one way of thinking, and is serious and passionate about this most exciting line of thinking, the training this program provides will go along way to furthering your career.