Attending therapy as a training requirement? 5 times weekly analysis?

So I am currently planning to apply for Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy training.

I'm at the stage of finishing off my undergraduate degree in Psychology. I have been looking at the requirements of the courses I want to apply to, and most of them require four to five weekly personal analysis for the duration of the whole training, and a year before.

Has anyone had any experience with this intensity of analysis? What do you talk about? I really can't imagine continuously seeing a analyst five times a week for something like 5 years at this point, but that's the general requirement. And I know this is the type of training I want to do.

I applied for a course that needed you to have a weekly session, but I’ve never heard of 5 weekly sessions being required. Do you have to pay for that on top of the course fees? If so, how the hell does anyone manage to afford to become a therapist these days.

My T is going through Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy training and they too require her to have her own analysis done for pretty much the duration of the program. I believe part of the reason to have that requirement is to see what it is like from the other side. I know with T's program after so many years (I don't recall) she can apply to have that requirement marked as met/completed.

I'm sure there's benefit in having your own analysis. I'm positive, having that lived experience is very valuable.

Why do you want to do this type of training if you do not expect (or want to) have clients that you see 4-5 times a week for 5 or more years?

I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that in order to become any type of psychoanalyst, you needed to have extensive analysis yourself, usually several times a week for the duration of the course. So I think 5 times a week for 5 years is pretty standard. Having never done it, I can’t tell you what it’s like. I do suspect that dealing mostly with unconscious stuff is going to open up a lot of doors that you may be be unaware of, so time will feel very different to goal oriented psychotherapy?

This is standard for PSYCHOANALYTIC training, which is a very specific type of psychotherapy. It is not standard for psychological training in general. Many program recommend you get therapy, the standard once a week kind, and some programs require it. But only the psychoanalytic programs require five days a week, because that is the type of therapy they train you to provide. To exceptionally well insured or wealthy patients only.

I would maybe do a bit more research on what Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy itself involves. Psychoanalysis tends to involve intense 3-5 days per week treatment. Do they really do this with childres and adolescents? If so, I what does this look like? They are requiring you to obtain this type of therapy for yourself because that is what you will be providing for your clients. Maybe a better option for you would be to just focus on Child/Adolescent Psychotherapy rather than the Psychoanalytic aspect. Something to think about.

My T is an analyst at the end of his training and he has been going through analysis himself while in school. From what he says it's important for an analyst to do this a) to experience the service they're providing, and b) because if they don't have a good handle on their own issues, they can be harmful to clients.

I go 3x a week so it's not quite that frequent but I guess it's analysis. We talk about whatever's on my mind, things that interest me or things that bother me, work, relationships I have with other people, the relationship between us. Just whatever. And then we talk about how these things fit into the broader patterns of my life and current experience.

I'm neither of those things but because my T is in training he charges less, and my insurance covers part of it. Analysts have sliding scales like other Ts do.

Emmalee, maybe it would be worth trying out analysis before you invest in a program like this, to see if it's really what you want.

There will always be something to talk about - free association, dream analysis, resistance, etc etc. Not to mention how seeing the same person so often can bring up so much more.

I know someone who did such training. They could not stand being in front of a blank-slate, robot-like, therapist. The relational element was a critical missing part. But if that's what you want to do you, it is good training for what you want to do.

I've been doing 4xweek analysis for 7 years for now. I'm considering training as a psychoanalyst one day and that means that I probably have to go through a second analysis, hopefully a bit shorter then.

But yeah, I would say that this frequency and this length is really necessary to bring out very deep and fundamental issues. When going less frequently, people tend to talk about daily life issues. When going every day, the importance of discussing daily life fades and gives room for more fundamental, characterological problems to surface and express themselves.

According to my personal opinion, the experience of the psychoanalysis with an experienced and sensitive analyst is invaluable.

Where I live, it depends on the actual institution providing the training. There are some that do not cultivate that intensity, but work with the other tenets of psychoanalysis, and call it psychoanalytic. I definitely think it's good to experience whatever someone wants to provide to others, especially something that involving. IMO, a lot of the incompetencies and cluelessness therapists can show is coming from the fact that they do not really understand what they are doing, and intense psychological work is not something one can easily get simply by just reading and hearing about it. If you don't want that intensity, maybe look for something that is just child and adolescent psychotherapy - I imagine they would still cover some basics of classic analysis, but might be more flexible?

I don't do psychoanalysis, but I've been seeing my T three times a week since the pandemic started (likely switching back to twice a week soon) and was doing twice a week for a couple years before that. I agree on how it helps going into deeper issues. It could end up that one session is spent on day to day stuff, while the other(s) are more on deeper topics. It also helps to be able to continue a more complex topic, or follow up on an insight that happened near the end of session within the next couple days rather than waiting a week.

I did find with my ex-T, who I saw once a week, that I'd end up caught up in a bit of a cycle of spending much of the session recapping the week or just dealing with one thing that had happened in life (like a fight with my husband), which left little time to look at bigger-picture issues.

It also seems like, if you'd want to do this sort of psychoanalysis, that it would help for you to see what it feels like to go that frequently (I assume your future clients would see you that often as well).

Who can possibly do such a thing 5 times a week? How could people accomplish it if they have families and jobs and are taking classes and simply need to get housework done. Every single work day and for 5 years??? That simply isn’t doable!

I think that I would be concerned about the competence of the analyst. When you begin the relationship you would have no way of knowing whether they were truly competent, you would be putting yourself in a very vulnerable position in the hands of a complete stranger. The analyst could be dysfunctional, a megalomaniac, narcissistic. Stopping and walking away midway through wouldn’t be a simple or harmless thing to do.

I agree. I have noticed people do love to say how they raised a family and worked 3 jobs and got a degree/career change mid life all on their own....but they don’t mention the huge circle of friends and family or financial support they have got that helped them every day. That doesn’t count as ‘doing it all on your own’. I don’t have a family, friends or connections to help me out. I dunno where I was going with this, just really depressed sorry.

I am sorry you are depressed. I think we talk about different things though.

I actually got all my degrees while working full time and raising a kid. No there was no help. Financial support was my student loan that I am still paying off at age 54. People do that kind of thing. My husband (way before we’ve met) switched career in his 40s and he just had to borrow ton of student loans, no he had no one to help him at all. So it does happen a lot with no help.

I was just trying to say that I don’t understand who has the time to see an analysts every single day for 5 years. Unless one lives next door to therapy clinic, you’d have to drive there every day in addition to other things you have to do.

Unless one drops everything else and just sees an analyst and goes to school. I could see maybe doing it for a year living off student loans or family help but how can one do it for 5 years every day? I’ve never heard such thing. I was just shocked hearing that such requirements are imposed on people

So, I don't see my analyst 5xweek but "only" 4, but perhaps I can still answer that question.

The major things in my life are family (spouse plus two teenage children), full-time work at a university, full time studies at the same university and analysis 4xweek.

So, my kids are already quite big already that they don't need so much direct handling anymore. When I started my analysis they were of course quite a bit younger but I did work part time then and I also did not go to school.

I work and study at the same university and I do not live in the university town, which is 2.5 hours away from where I live. This means that I mostly work from home and do meetings over skype. As I am research staff, I have only very small teaching load. Anyway, due to all that and due to the fact that I have my own funding, my work organization is very flexible.

I mostly go physically to my uni for lectures and seminars related to my studies, typically two days per week. I commute with train which gives several hours of time for work or study readings. I also work or study on weekends if necessary (and typically it is).

Now, the analysis. I have early morning sessions - three times face to face, once via skype. On days I don't go to this other town I arrive back from my analysis and can start my workday at 9am. The overall trip takes about 2.5 hours. On one day, the session is even earlier, so I will catch the 8am train to the uni town. And the skype session on the fourth day is also very early in the morning so that I can typically even take a small nap before I have to go anywhere or start doing anything.

So, this is just an example but it just exemplfies that because all those activities are important to me, it is possible to make things work out sustainably.

Ah yes, we are talking on different things sorry. I have student loans, they just didn’t bring me a career, I can’t get any more as my income is too low...I can’t have kids either but even if by some miracle I could, I have no one to help me look after them while I work or study or anything. It doesn’t matter anyway.

I agree 5 times a week therapy is a lot, I hope you get to choose your therapist so you get a good one. The course sounds like a heavy one but really interesting. Good luck to OP whatever you choose.

As many have stated, this does seem to be part of the requirements for someone going through psychoanalysis. I think experiencing the need to juggle all these elements is another reason to include one's own analysis of the student in a psychoanalytical training program. Lived experience will go a long way to authentic empathizing with their future clients. As for my T's program, they are to pick from a list of approved therapists for their analysis unless they have their own from prior to acceptance into their program and are able to obtain a waiver. Her program also only meets Friday afternoons for in person lectures. They do have to meet with others as part of the program; however, those are not set times by the program.

Sure it is hard, I do not believe it isn't doable otherwise the programs would not exist.

I don't have children, work on my own schedule, and prioritize my mental health over housework.

Good point about working from home/going to school mostly online and possibly seeing a therapist online. That could be done. I was thinking about my long commute (driving) and working face to face and having to drive to clinic every day! That’s not physically doable. What you described is doable. I didn’t think of that scenario. Good example, thank you

Got you! Working on your own schedule does help!

It depends where you train. Have a look at the British Psychotherapy Foundation and Tavistock, I would imagine they require less frequent analysis.

I think psychodynamic training might require less.

The ones I mentioned above are psychoanalytic courses but the Tavistock one is 4-5 x weekly. The BPF course is 3-4 x though. I think generally working with children, especially psychoanalytically requires you to be in more therapy. Here's a link to the BPF course:

Child Adolescent Training | British Psychotherapy Foundation.

I've never really understood what 'psychodynamic' meant, I always thought it referred to counselling courses that are psychoanalytically informed??