"And what does this remind you of?"

On the insufferable infantilisation of the trainee therapist.

Quick note: on 27 August I’m teaching an interactive class where we’ll explore the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Rapunzel as if it were a dream. I’ve been teaching a few similar classes and attendees have shared that they enjoy the unique perspective I bring and found the reflections in the group very valuable. It’s only £25, so why not join us?

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Picture this. You finished uni. You got a job and had a whole career for 10-20-30 years. Maybe you even started your own business and learned how to handle employees, taxes, and clients. Maybe you got married and had children. Maybe your children grew up and got married themselves. Maybe you got divorced, fired, bereaved, and left by a few friends.

By most standards, you’d be considered an adult™: someone who, having gone through enough life, is capable of making decisions, asking for what they need, and taking some responsibility for their own childishness which inevitably emerges at times.

At that point, you might think that you’ve lived enough, grown enough (and had enough)—and you’d like to do something that genuinely helps others. You decide to retrain as a therapist.

You read through all the financial demands (the ~£25k in tuition fees, the ~£12k for therapy, the ~£2-3 for supervision, and however much you’ll choose to spend on books and other courses), the academic requirements, and the time commitments (including doing hundreds of hours of unpaid therapy)—and you somehow decide that this is still what you want to do. That you’re ready. And you’ll make it work.

You begin your training and only then you discover a key piece of information that you didn’t find anywhere, not even in the fine print of the student brochure—

—that (regardless of your age, experience, or even how much therapy you’ve already done prior to retraining), as soon as you walk through the doors of your psychotherapy training institute, your well-earned adult™ status will be revoked.

The double edge of transference

There’s something deeply ironic about learning a vocation that requires exceptional levels of maturity, while being treated like a child throughout (and being expected to take it like an adult).

On some level, perhaps infantilisation is an inevitable part of the student experience. There you are, once again in the school system, ruled by an authority who decides your schedule, your deadlines, your grades, and what happens if you fail to meet any of the strict requirements of the course, for any reason.

You sit in class with others who seem to know more than you—or you’re the know-it-all who always raises their hand to share. You hear your parent’s critical voice in your head every time a peer gets a higher grade or reveals that they have more client hours than you. You forget your homework. You write your essays last minute. You sweet-talk all the right lecturers to gain their approval. You say a dumb thing in class. You’re envied for getting good grades or you’re punished for being disruptive. There’s colleagues telling on each other, students demanding for more policing from the facilitator in group therapy, or students mocking supervisors behind their backs for being told off in supervision.

In this sense, you’re bound to experience some transference with the authority of the training and your colleagues. You will behave in infantile ways because you’re a human, and as long as you’re a human you will have unresolved stuff. So thank god you’re in therapy!

But this is not the infantilisation I’m most concerned with. Beyond this unfortunate, yet normal experience of self-infantilisation (or, you know, regression) lies the insidious reality of a power dynamic—one that often neglects the fact that transference goes both ways.

Just as students are likely to project early authority figures onto lecturers, markers, therapists, or administrative figures at the training, so can these more “realised” people project their own inner experiences onto students. But while trainees are expected to take responsibility for their infantile projections and take them to therapy, those in authority will remain unquestioned while hitting you with the same old condescending question:

“And what does this remind you of?”

Unacknowledged power dynamics

Many examples come to mind. From supervisors not taking responsibility for mistakes, facilitators framing criticism as a trauma response from the student, or course administrators establishing impossible deadlines while taking months to return graded assignments, the power dynamics within therapeutic training run deep.

Regardless of the situation, there’s usually very little space for conversation. The authority figure’s interpretation of what’s happening must be accepted as The Truth—even when they know little about your history or current situation. And if you feel misheard or misunderstood, well, you can take that to therapy too.

While these situations are often laughable, the lack of acknowledgement of projections coming from such authority figures can be damaging. In earlier stages of my training I often found myself second-guessing my instincts and doubting my inner authority. I felt impotent dealing with projections that didn’t fit my experience of a situation. And I inevitably doubted my suitability to guide others through therapy, if I truly understood so little of myself as some authority figures made it seem.

These unacknowledged power dynamics can plant seeds of doubt, but they also model a kind of therapeutic relationship where the therapist is the expert in the client’s material, rather than the reverse. In such situations, the therapist is the all-knowing, all-seeing, infallible god who can see into the client’s soul in a way the client will never be able to. Instead of fostering insight into the childhood conditions that make one repeat such power dynamics (and overcoming them), these experiences are mere repetitions of those conditions—perhaps facilitated by a former infantilised trainee therapist on a power trip?

Against interpretation

Of course, this isn’t to say that every training experience is like this or that most trainees won’t be able to stand up for themselves like the adults™ that they are. At the same time, it appears that the adult™ status needs to be continuously defended against reductive, infantilising interpretations by those in authority.

And perhaps the issue lies with an overuse of interpretation as a therapeutic intervention. Although generally effective, psychodynamic approaches often rely heavily on the therapist’s interpretation of the client’s transference. However, the assumption that the client projects their experience with early authority figures onto the therapist is correct, but not always right. As we’ve seen, transference goes both ways and therapists can equally project their own “stuff” onto their clients.

This became painfully aware for me last year while rereading Irvin Yalom for the first time in ten years. I had discovered his books in my early twenties and was instantly blown away by his clever interpretations: how did he figure out that a client’s compulsive sexuality was only due to his death anxiety? How could he tell what the client’s unconscious issue was so quickly from a mere story?

Yalom played a significant part in what inspired me to retrain as a therapist. However, studying his manual of existential psychotherapy last year suddenly made his brilliant interpretations sound off-mark, revealing his own limitations rather than an accurate, comprehensive understanding of his clients. I wrote my academic essay fervently critiquing his tendency to make his patients fit his existentialist theory, rather than the reverse—particularly his interpretation of having a spiritual orientation as death-denial rather than an intrinsic and meaningful aspect of existence, or his failure to consider that sometimes it’s death anxiety and sometimes it’s a coping mechanism driven by the last impact of trauma on a person’s nervous system.

Interpretations can be effective, but they’re also tinged with one’s own philosophy, preferred therapeutic approach, and life experience. Within an unacknowledged power dynamic, they can often feel like The Truth. But whose truth is the truest?

I’ve found it helpful to use interpretations sparsely and to rely on other therapeutic interventions that help the client make their own meaning. I like approaches like Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a body-based trauma treatment I trained in, where such statements are offered tentatively, as questions, encouraging the client to check if they resonate with what’s been offered.

If the statement fits, it usually helps the client feel seen and it deepens the experience towards stages of processing and resolution. If it doesn’t, the therapist will plainly admit that they got it wrong and will encourage the client to find a more accurate statement based on their in-the-moment experience. This fosters a relationship of safety and collaboration, without infantilising the client.

Ironically, such an approach doesn’t bypass the power dynamic, but it recognises it as an intrinsic part of the relationship. It creates room for the so-called authority figure to get things wrong and for the client to claim their own authority over their personal material. Most often than not, it works brilliantly.

But seriously, what does this remind you of?

As I sit here writing this essay, I can’t help but feel a twinge of trepidation—a whispering voice in the back of my mind that questions whether I’m crossing a line. What if this essay finds its way to the very authority figures I’m critiquing—am I even allowed to have a voice? What if my words are seen as disruptive or disrespectful? What if I’m wrong? What if, instead of sparking a necessary conversation, this piece leads to reprimands, misunderstandings, or worse—a punishment?

My infantilisation in this training clearly runs deep. As a trainee therapist, sometimes everything constantly reminds you of something, to the point of remaining frozen in endless self-analysis. It’s easy to feel small and insignificant under the weight of constant scrutiny.

But as an adult™, I also remember that we can make mistakes and admit that we got it wrong. We can demand fairness, even if we don’t receive it. We also owe it to ourselves to change what doesn’t work within the systems that we otherwise love. And maybe it starts with a conversation.

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Thank you for reading this essay. If you’ve experienced this kind of infantilisation too, I would love to hear about it in a comment below—let’s exchange stories! And if the essay resonates with you, like it and share it with your community so it reaches more people.