Becoming a Clinical Psychologist

Personal Stories of Doctoral Training

Contributions by Adi Avivi, Brianna Blake, Silvia Fiammenghi, Benjamin Gottesman, Noel Hunter, Dustin Kahoud, Kathleen Kallstrom-Schreckengost, Robert Keisner, Danielle Knafo, Samantha Shoshana Lawrence, Matthew Liebmann, Jeremy Novich, Adjoa Osei, Ian Rugg Edited by Danielle Knafo, Robert Keisner, Silvia Fiammenghi

Publication date:

06 February 2015

Length of book:

220 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442239920

Whether you are thinking about starting therapy, going to graduate school, or are yourself a practicing healer of hearts and minds, Becoming a Clinical Psychologist: Personal Stories of Doctoral Training offers a wealth of useful information about today’s training and trainees.. This book is a collection of accounts written by a diverse group of early-career psychologists and doctoral students in their final stages of training. Each of the twelve authors provides a deeply personal, inside perspective on becoming a therapist. Some of the chapters combine qualitative research with the author’s particular experience, while others emphasize the author’s personal journey as s/he moves from novice to clinician. Some of the issues that are covered include the ways in which training affects personal and professional relationships with spouses, friends, peers, faculty and supervisors, and clients; how budding clinicians deal with their own issues and feelings of inadequacy; and how trainees learn to develop the right balance of empathy and detachment in working with clients. Also unique to this collection is the diversity reflected in the contributors, which include an Orthodox Jewish gay man who “came out” during training; a Black woman of African descent who found a home in the psychoanalytic approach; a White man who experienced minority status in his mostly female doctoral program; a bisexual, White woman who had to negotiate misperceptions and judgments as she moved through her clinical training; and a dissident student who came from another profession and found herself at odds with most of her professors and supervisors about the role of trauma in the etiology of mental illness. Becoming a Clinical Psychologist is a compelling read for those both inside and outside the field of psychology.

Introduction: Danielle Knafo, Robert Keisner, and Silvia Fiammenghi
Part I: Beginner’s Mind: First Experiences Conducting Therapy
Chapter 1: Personal and Professional Integration in a Dual-Oriented Doctoral Program
Dustin Kahoud
Chapter 2: Conducting Therapy for the First Time
Adi Avivi
Chapter 3: Guilt in the Beginning Therapist: Etiology and Impact on Treatment
Benjamin Gottesman
Chapter 4: The Novice in the Therapist’s Chair
Samantha Shoshana Lawrence
Part II: Navigating the Personal and Professional during Doctoral Training
Chapter 5: Clinical Psychology Training and Romance: For Better or for Worse?
Silvia Fiammenghi
Chapter 6: Clinical Psychology Doctoral Students with a History of Eating Disorders
Brianna Blake
Chapter 7: Life as a Juggler: Work, Family, and Study inside a Doctoral Psychology Program
Matthew Liebman
Chapter 8: Experiences of a “Black Sheep” in a Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program
Noel Hunter
Part Three: Outside the Norm: Effects of Diversity in Training and Treatment
Chapter 9: A Few Good Men: The Male Experience of Minority Status in a Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program
Ian Rugg
Chapter 10: Notes from a Queer Student’s Graduate Training
Kathleen Kallstrom-Schreckengost
Chapter 11: Finding My Place in Psychoanalysis as a Black, Female StudentAdjoa OseiChapter 12: From the Closet to the Clinic: An Orthodox Jewish Man Comes Out in Training
Jeremy NovichContributor Notes

The book Becoming a Clinical Psychologist: Personal Stories of Doctoral Training...captures the concerns of graduate students in doctoral clinical psychology programs, and it outlines them in honest, touching, thoughtful, and insightful narratives. The book contains a total of 12 chapters which are organized into three sections pertaining to the experiences of beginning therapists, the personal and professional challenges involved in training, and the training and clinical practice of doctoral students belonging to diverse groups. This book reminds students, professors, and supervisors of the fears that graduate students tend to have in their training such as fears of evaluation, of failure, of incompetence, and of the need for self-care during the training process. The beginning clinical psychology trainee can experience a good deal of stress and isolation, and this book can serve as an extremely useful source of social support. It offers narratives of both common experiences and unique circumstances with which the student in a clinical psychology program can identify. . . .This book can function as a foundation for the doctoral clinical psychology student seeking validation for thoughts and feelings related to their diverse experiences. In addition, professors and supervisors can use this book to better understand their students as individuals, to gain perspective on their fears and concerns, and to avoid asking inappropriate questions of the graduate student based on a lack of understanding of diverse issues. . . .[T]his book may encourage faculty and supervisors to become more sensitive to the questions they ask graduate students.