Learning from the Unconscious: Essential Training Experiences for Analytic Candidates

Danielle Knafo, Ph.D. is a professor, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst.  Currently, she is faculty and supervisor at NYU and Adelphi postgraduate psychoanalytic institutes. Danielle is a prolific writer and popular lecturer. She has written ten books and dozens of articles in addition to art catalogue essays and art criticism. Just a few titles demonstrate her range and interdisciplinary approach: Dancing with the Unconscious: The Art of Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalysis of Art; The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Art and Psychoanalysis; The New Sexual Landscape and Contemporary Psychoanalysis; and From Breakdown to Breakthrough: Psychoanalytic Treatment of Psychosis. Danielle’s 40 years of clinical experience include inpatient hospital work as well as outpatient clinics, criminal court, and private practice. 

 She maintains a private practice in Manhattan and Great Neck, New York.

The journey to becoming a skilled psychoanalyst or psychodynamic practitioner requires more than theoretical knowledge and supervised practice with higher functioning patients. While traditional psychoanalytic training provides crucial foundational knowledge, there are specific clinical and nonclinical experiences that offer unparalleled insights into the workings of the unconscious mind—the central pillar of psychoanalytic thought and the major feature distinguishing psychoanalytic treatment from all other therapeutic approaches. As Laplanche and Pontalis (1973) observed in The Language of Psychoanalysis, "if Freud's discovery had to be summed up in one word, that word would without doubt have to be 'unconscious'" (p. 474). Consequently, it behooves those who teach psychoanalysis to consider how best to prepare early career therapists for working with the unconscious.

I propose that working with individuals experiencing psychosis, engaging therapeutically with children, and cultivating an appreciation for the arts represent three essential pathways for early (and later) career therapists to deepen their understanding of unconscious processes. These experiences will inevitably enhance their future work with the hidden dimensions of the psyche, as encountered in dreams, symbols, symptoms, and the transference-countertransference. In this essay, I elucidate why I consider these three experiences helpful training adjuncts for learning to work with the unconscious.

The Transparent Unconscious: Learning from Psychosis

Working with individuals experiencing psychotic states offers early career therapists a unique window into unconscious functioning. In psychosis, the usual barriers between conscious and unconscious material become permeable, creating what might be described as a "transparent unconscious." This transparency, while often distressing for the patient, provides an extraordinary learning opportunity for the developing analyst to witness the raw operations of the psyche.

In psychotic presentations, primary process thinking—typically confined to dreams and fantasy—emerges directly into waking consciousness. The ego's synthetic function weakens, allowing unconscious content to flood awareness without the usual transformations of secondary process. Symbolic equations replace symbolic thinking, and the mechanisms of condensation and displacement that Freud (1900) identified in dream work become visible in real-time interaction via delusions and hallucinations. When a patient believes the television is speaking directly to them, the therapist witnesses the projection of internal objects onto external reality—the same mechanism that operates in transference, though in psychosis without the reality testing that maintains the "as if" quality of neurotic projection.

The paranoid structure reveals the mind's fundamental tendency toward meaning-making through unconscious association. What Bion (1957) described as the psychotic patient's concrete thinking demonstrates how symbols collapse into the things they represent, eliminating the space for metaphor that characterizes higher mental functioning. For the candidate, observing this collapse illuminates by contrast the sophisticated symbolic capacity required for work with free associations and dreams.

These clinical encounters teach early career therapists to recognize what Klein (1946) called the paranoid-schizoid position in its most undisguised form. The splitting of objects into all-good and all-bad, the projection of persecutory anxieties, and the desperate attempts to control threatening internal experiences become starkly visible. Understanding these primitive defenses in psychosis prepares one to recognize their more subtle manifestations in neurotic patients, where similar mechanisms operate beneath apparently rational discourse.

The experience of working with thought disorder teaches candidates about the architecture of meaning itself. When a patient's associations follow purely emotional or phonetic connections rather than logical sequences, the therapist learns to track the emotional coherence that underlies apparent chaos. This skill proves invaluable in attending to free associations and interpretation of dreams, where similar non-logical connections reveal the unconscious's organizing principles.

Furthermore, working with psychosis demands particular qualities of presence and countertransference awareness. The intensity of raw unconscious material requires therapists to develop what Winnicott (1971) called the capacity to "be with" rather than "do to." Projective identification, so common when working with psychotic states, means the therapist often experiences directly the patient's unbearable mental states. Learning to contain these projections without being overwhelmed or retaliating teaches essential skills for managing intense transference-countertransference dynamics in all analytic work.

Working with negative symptom psychosis (anhedonia, apathy, avolition), means listening to one who can speak only in the language of the body, affect, symbol, or action. Such listening teaches humility before the power of unconscious forces while simultaneously building confidence in the analyst's ability to remain present with profound psychological material. One learns that interpretation is often less important than providing what Bion (1962) termed "alpha function"—the capacity to metabolize raw emotional experience into thinkable thoughts. This understanding fundamentally shifts the therapist's approach to all analytic work, emphasizing process and containment over premature interpretation. It is not coincidental that many who work with psychosis claim that, though the work is challenging, one learns to communicate from one unconscious to another, allowing the therapist to grow as much as, if not more than, the patient.

Art by Lea Filip

The Child's Direct Access: Learning from Young Minds

When Picasso observed that it took him a lifetime to learn how to draw like a child, he was referring to a hard-earned ability in adulthood that comes naturally in childhood: spontaneity and connectivity unaffected by the constraints of reason and convention (Knafo, 2012). Children represent another population with remarkably direct access to unconscious content. Unlike adults, who have developed sophisticated defenses and secondary process thinking, children naturally operate closer to their unconscious impulses, fantasies, and symbolic world. For the analytic candidate, working with children provides an education in the natural language of the psyche before it becomes encrypted by repression, rationalization and social pressures.

In child analysis, play assumes the central role that free association holds in adult work. As Anna Freud (1946) and Melanie Klein (1932) demonstrated, from different theoretical perspectives, play represents the child's natural method of symbolic communication. The early career therapist observes how children use toys, stories, and dramatic scenarios to express what cannot yet be verbalized, witnessing the unconscious at work in its most creative and healing manifestations. A child who repeatedly enacts rescue scenes may be working through feelings of helplessness, while another who sorts objects obsessively might be attempting to master chaotic internal and external experiences.

Children's thinking reveals what Piaget (1951) called the "symbolic function" in its developmental emergence. The beginning therapist witnesses how abstract concepts become concrete representations, how internal conflicts get externalized through play characters, and how emotional experiences that overwhelm the child's cognitive capacity get metabolized through symbolic enactment. This direct observation of symbol formation illuminates the process that operates in reverse during dream interpretation—understanding how symbols emerge helps the analyst recognize how they can be decoded as well.

The immediacy of children's emotional expression teaches candidates about authentic affect before it becomes defended against or sophisticated into complex characterological patterns. When a child rages at a toy, the candidate sees pure aggression untempered by social convention. When they tenderly care for a doll, primary maternal identification appears without the complications of adult ambivalence. These experiences attune one to recognize similar authentic emotions in adults, even when they appear in heavily defended or intellectualized forms.

Working with children illuminates the development of object relationships in their foundational form. Candidates observe directly how children internalize relationships with caregivers, work through separation anxiety, and gradually develop the capacity for concern that Klein (1935) identified as central to psychological development. The child who feeds a stuffed animal demonstrates emerging reparative impulses, while another who repeatedly destroys or abandons toys reveals patterns of identification with abusive or rejecting objects.

Perhaps most importantly, work with children teaches early career therapists about the natural healing potential of the psyche. Children possess extraordinary capacity for resilience and growth when provided with a safe, understanding relationship. If the environment does not overreact, even severe childhood obsessive and compulsive symptoms can disappear as quickly as they appeared. The candidate learns that psychological healing often occurs not through interpretation but through provision of what Winnicott (1960) termed a "holding environment"—a reliable, non-impinging presence that allows natural development to unfold.

The developmental perspective gained through child work enriches the candidate's understanding of adult pathology, relationships, and transference. Many adult symptoms represent arrested or distorted childhood developmental processes. Everyone carries within an inner child until they die. The candidate who has witnessed both healthy and troubled childhood development can better recognize when adult patients are struggling with unresolved issues from earlier developmental phases.

Children also demonstrate the ego's gradual development and progressive strengthening of defenses. Therapists observe how children naturally use projection, introjection, and identification as normal developmental processes before these mechanisms become pathological in their rigidity or extent. Understanding these mechanisms as natural aspects of development helps candidates recognize when adult defenses serve adaptive functions versus when they have become maladaptive obstacles to growth.

Art as Teacher: Aesthetic Appreciation and Unconscious Wisdom

Freud believed that artists, more than other people, have an instinctive understanding of the unconscious. He is known to have pointed to his bookshelf, stating that the authors' literary masterpieces were his teachers. Indeed, the third essential experience for analytic candidates lies in cultivating deep appreciation for art in its various forms. Artists have long served as unconscious explorers, giving form to psychological truths that precede theoretical understanding. For the developing analyst, engaging seriously with art provides training in recognizing and interpreting symbolic communication while developing the aesthetic sensibility essential for understanding the unconscious's own artistic productions in dreams and symptoms.

Great art emerges from what Jung (1966) called the "transcendent function"—the artist's capacity to bridge conscious and unconscious material, giving form to contents that would otherwise remain chaotic or inaccessible. When early career therapists learn to encounter art receptively, allowing it to work on them rather than immediately rushing to interpretation, they develop the same receptive capacity needed for analytic listening. This aesthetic receptivity parallels Freud's (1912) concept of "evenly hovering attention"—the analyst's ability to remain open to whatever emerges without preconceived expectations.

Art By Lea Filip

Literature offers particularly rich training in understanding the complexity of human motivation and the multiple layers of meaning that characterize unconscious communication. One  who reads Dostoyevsky encounters psychological doubling, guilt, and unconscious confession that appear in patient material. Shakespeare's exploration of ambition, jealousy, and family dynamics provides a master class in understanding how unconscious conflicts manifest in behavior and relationships. These literary encounters teach candidates to appreciate the economy and power of symbolic expression while developing tolerance for psychological complexity and contradiction.

The study of visual arts trains what we might call the "symbolic eye"—the capacity to perceive meaning embedded in form, color, and composition. When candidates learn to recognize the symbolic significance of Dalí's melted clocks or Magritte's doors opening to cloudy skies, they develop skills directly applicable to understanding nonverbal communication and unconscious dream imagery. Engaging with abstract art develops tolerance for ambiguity and non-representational meaning. The same capacity that allows appreciation of how Picasso fragments and reassembles the human form helps the analyst understand how the unconscious breaks apart and pieces together aspects of self and world. Applying Kleinian theory, Fuller (1980) proposes that such works involve attacks and reparation simultaneously.

The appreciation of aboriginal and outsider art offers particular value for analytic training. These art forms, created outside academic conventions, often provide more direct access to unconscious material. The raw power of Art Brut or the symbolic intensity of indigenous art forms can teach candidates to recognize authentic symbolic expression unmediated by intellectual defenses.

Music offers unique insights into rhythm, timing, and the communication of emotional states that transcend verbal expression. The candidate who develops musical sensitivity learns about the importance of tempo, pause, and crescendo in therapeutic interaction. They understand how meaning can be communicated through purely formal properties—volume, pitch, harmony—skills that translate to recognizing the musical qualities of patient communications and the emotional undertones that often carry more significance than manifest content.

Poetry provides intensive training in condensed meaning and metaphorical thinking. The poetic techniques of metaphor, metonymy, and symbolism mirror precisely the mechanisms Freud identified in dream work. When candidates learn to unpack the multiple meanings contained in poetic imagery, they develop analytical skills needed to understand how dreams condense complex emotional experiences into brief, highly charged images.

Integration and Clinical Application

These three areas of experience work synergistically to prepare analytic candidates for the sophisticated task of working with unconscious material in all its manifestations. The transparency of psychosis teaches recognition of primary process thinking and primitive mechanisms of defense and object relations. Work with children demonstrates the natural development and expression of unconscious content while illuminating the healing potential inherent in symbolic communication. Aesthetic appreciation develops the sensitivity, receptivity, and interpretive sophistication necessary for understanding the unconscious's artistic and pathological productions.

The integration of these experiences creates what I call "unconscious literacy"—a fluency in the languages through which the unconscious speaks. Early career therapists develop the capacity to recognize condensation when a patient's single word carries multiple associative meanings, to identify displacement when emotional intensity appears attached to seemingly trivial concerns, and to understand symbolization when concrete symptoms carry metaphorical significance.

This preparation proves essential for following free associations, working with dreams, and understanding the meaning of symptoms, defense mechanisms, and transference-countertransference reactions. Together, these experiences prepare candidates for the complex dynamics that characterize deep analytic work, creating analysts capable of what Ogden (1997) calls "analytic reverie"—the capacity to allow the patient's unconscious material to work on the analyst's own unconscious, generating insights that emerge from the creative intersection of two psyches.

In our increasingly rationalized and digitized world, these experiences offer analytic candidates connection to more fundamental ways of knowing and being. They prepare future analysts not simply to interpret unconscious material, but to appreciate its wisdom, respect its healing potential, and trust its creative capacity—a preparation invaluable not only for clinical practice but for maintaining the analyst's own connection to the regenerative powers of the unconscious throughout a career devoted to exploring the deepest dimensions of human experience.

Art by Lea Filip

By Danielle Knafo

References

Bion, W. R. (1957). Differentiation of the psychotic from the non-psychotic personalities. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 38, 266-275.

Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning from Experience. London: Heinemann.

Freud, A. (1946). The Psychoanalytical Treatment of Children. London: Imago Publishing.

Freud, S. (1900). The Interpretation of Dreams. Standard Edition, 4-5. London: Hogarth Press.

Freud, S. (1912). Recommendations to physicians practicing psycho-analysis. Standard Edition, 12, 109-120. London: Hogarth Press.

Fuller, P. (1980). Art and Psychoanalysis. Writers and Readers.

Jung, C. G. (1966). The transcendent function. In The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (pp. 67-91). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Klein, M. (1932). The Psycho-Analysis of Children. London: Hogarth Press.

Klein, M. (1935). A contribution to the psychogenesis of manic-depressive states. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 16, 145-174.

Klein, M. (1946). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 27, 99-110.

Knafo, D. (2012). Dancing with the unconscious: The art of psychoanalysis and the psychoanalysis of art. Routledge.

Laplanche, J., & Pontalis, J. B. (1973). The Language of Psychoanalysis. New York: Norton.

Ogden, T. H. (1997). Reverie and metaphor: Some thoughts on how I work as a psychoanalyst. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 78, 719-732.

Piaget, J. (1951). Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Winnicott, D. W. (1960). The theory of the parent-infant relationship. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 41, 585-595.

Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock Publications.