Teaching, Teaching and More Teaching

 

So, where, whom and why do I teach? The where is easy: UCLA, New Center for Psychoanalysis and LMU (sometimes). The whom, is also easy. I teach psychiatry residents, child psychiatry fellows and psychotherapists. The why is the challenging question. It keeps me stimulated mentally and it keeps me feeling young and in touch with the next generation. That is the short answer. The longer answer is more complicated. Do I like the admiration that sometimes results from a teacher/student relationship? Yes, and no, is my answer. Yes, it sometimes feels good, but no, with that admiration comes the flip side of “falling down” at times, as the student matures professionally. The teacher/student relationship, like the parent/child relationship is fraught with both idealization and devaluation. Like raising a child, in the beginning, there is a feeling of deep love, on both sides, but as the relationship develops over time, the dynamics get more nuanced, more layered with good and bad feelings. To teach is to grow, I would like to say, and I believe that to be true. Yet, with all growth, comes pain, and struggle, and so the challenges are large. I see myself as a life-long student, and as such, I have signed up for the life-long struggle of learning, growing, and expanding, which can feel exciting, but it can also feel  remarkably humbling. No one said growing is easy, and so it is not.