I have to come back to this series. I thought I had come to the correct conclusion the other day that it wasn’t financially viable to become a Jungian Analyst because I saw the hourly rates of five OAJA members. However, I didn’t have information on how busy they were, so, being an Enneagram type 4 with a 5 wing, I was stingy with my assumption, and decided they weren’t making a great income as analysts. Part of my assumption included the fact that many OAJA members appear to be seniors and they are probably doing this for passion in retirement.
Then this morning, I finally got around to listening to the last fifteen minutes of the This Jungian Life podcast episode, “How to Become a Jungian Analyst”, and they painted a quite different picture. A hopeful one, to be exact. Sure they agreed that you’d be poor and worn down after school while completing your supervised hours, which was to be expected:
Lee: “How does one create a career as an analyst? How do we make it work in the world?”
Marchiano: “Ah, so important, and so seldom spoken about.” [laughter]
Lee: “Indeed.”
Marchiano: “Well I’ll start off by saying that … if you’re changing careers and you’re going to get a Masters degree, one difficult thing to keep in mind is that you usually need a couple of years of supervision to get licensed. So you don’t get a mental health license in most states, in most fields, by simply getting the degree. You have to be in practice, being supervised by a more senior member of your same field… often… working the equivalent of two years full-time in order to get the license. And that often means taking an agency job for many people, and agency jobs can be difficult and gruelling, and they don’t pay very well. It is possible in many cases to get a Masters degree and then hang out a shingle, as a solo practitioner, although again, that depends on the … licensure laws in your state whether or not that’s allowable….
“The upshot is you need to have a plan to sustain yourself financially, not only during the time that you’re getting the degree, but also potentially while you’re in that licensure stage, because it may be difficult to earn a lot of money as a therapist while you’re in that interim stage.”
Stewart: “In a way, it’s kind of like … you’re kind of turned out to serve a kind of apprenticeship in a hospital or an agency or a clinic of some kind, in order to get a lot of experience. And the kind of supervision required may not be particularly in depth- you may just have a meeting with your supervisor for half an hour every week, but there are bureaucratic processes at work here [laughter] so you’ll be able to log the significant number of hours most states require. And it is invaluable experience. Seeing a lot of people from lots of different backgrounds and lots of different life issues and all the rest of it, it is truly an invaluable experience. And it serves as the foundation to eventually go into private practice. I’m not sure about the two of you, I started out before there was much in the way of internet or social media or websites or anything, but it’s your colleagues who will support you, it’s your colleagues who will refer people to you. People who know you and have confidence in you. You know, you may have a colleague that’s working with a couple, and one of those people wants some individual work, and he or she will refer that person to you.
“But being out there in the field with a network of people, a connection with community, a connection with colleagues, a connection with professional organizations, maybe being in a seminar like our seminar in Philadelphia, gives you a base that has an energy all its own. I think of it like lighting briquettes. At the beginning you can’t see that much is happening, and then all of a sudden, things are cooking.”
Marchiano: Yeah there is the question of creating a practice for yourself, once you do have that license. And again, as far as I know, there’s no five easy steps to create a full practice. It usually takes some time. Even people who are really good at it, it can take at least … a year before you’ve got a practice that’s really supporting you. However I will say after that, after that, I really enjoy being self-employed, I find that in a funny way, there’s more stability to it … than working in a job, which you can always lose… and I feel like I can’t lose my job. And I have noticed that it seems to holds up really well, even during an economic downturn. So just from a nuts and bolts perspective, it’s good work that can also provide a stable financial foundation.
Lee: “Yes, being an analyst can be, just to be straightforward about it, can be lucrative, that people can make not only an adequate living, but they can, in fact, make a very good living. Most of the analysts that I know do not bill insurance for their services, and they do a self-pay practice. That, of course, is not required. It seems to go that way over time.
This Jungian Life, “How to Become a Jungian Analyst“, starting at 30:55.
And then Lee talks a bit more about how to advertise your services once you do hang up your shingle as a Jungian Analyst, to market yourself, or as he says, “to develop some comfort around being seen.” He also talks about some strategies for those who decide to move to an out-of-the-way city that doesn’t have enough of a base to initially support a practice. But then he talks about the joy of being a Jungian Analyst, and it made tears well up in my eyes.
Lee: “But overall, what I’d like to leave [with people] is some confidence that being a Jungian Analyst is a really viable career.”
Marchiana: “Yeah maybe I’ll just follow that up by saying it’s our experience on the podcast that people are hungry for this.”
Lee: “We were made for these times as Jungians, and Jungians have a lot to contribute to this time of change.”
Stewart: “And there is some way that going down the right road for the right reasons generates the kind of practical remunerative rewards that we all need, because we’re in service to something greater. And that is what people resonate to, and that is what people are hungry for. And it’s really a privilege and a great joy to be able to serve this kind of work in the world.”
Lee: “I find being an analyst to be the most interesting, compelling life to lead. I mean, it has spoiled me for anything else. I go home, and people are like , ‘Let’s go to a party, or how about a movie?’, and all that feels rather dull compared to the intensity and aliveness of what happens in an analytic session.”
Marichana: “Yeah. It’s like, ‘Really? I get to wake up and do this again tomorrow?'”
Stewart: “It’s the difference between being on a boat versus scuba diving … After you’ve been fifty feet below and seen all the wonders of that world, … nothing else really can match it.”
Marichano: “You know, I have friends who are … in the medical field … and they work for these big hospital systems, and they spend so much time with administrative headaches, and filling out forms, and getting training for this, that or the other thing, and I sort of sheepishly, “Oh I just…”. You know, I mean, there are administrative things that we have to do as clinicians, you have to file HIPAA paper work and keep notes, and of course you have to do your book keeping, and you have to keep up with your licensure, but overall, the amount of administrative, piddly stuff that you have to do is so small in comparison with the depth and the breadth of the actual work, that it’s really a good ratio.”
Lee: “And the intimacy that our relationship with our analysands … [it is] so intimate and so profound, that there’s really nothing like it. It’s such a privelege, and so powerful, to have a life that allows you … to move in those powerful relationships.”
Marichano: “And it’s meaningful. It is deeply meaningful. I can’t imagine anything more important.”
Stewart: “So … what we’re saying is, this is a huge adventure. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s a good, long, always interesting, sometimes challenging road to go down, and I don’t think that any of us can imagine having chosen anything else.”
As I type this out, a big hot cloud of sorrow has gathered in my chest, and I just want to weep listening to this. This is the kind of depth and intimacy and PERMISSION, and ability to help people that I crave. This looks like something you can really benefit from, not only in the meaning you bring to other peoples’ suffering, but also because you’re being healed during your training (and subsequent client work) too.