The Student Experience: Independent Study Path (ISP)
We asked two of our students to tell us of their experience moving through the ISP.
What made you chose the ISP program?
A.P. “Firstly, I was very struck by the Dr Frisch’s synthesis and approach. The training that I had had in my Masters Program, while being very interesting and useful, lacked any sense of spine, self-belief or frame. Content-wise, I feel very drawn to this somatically informed character analytic work for its robust depth and the powerful and transformational therapeutic frame it provides. The ISP program allows for listening at home or in the car and that means less time traveling to workshops/input sessions.”
M.P. “I chose the ISP program because I wanted to study Reich’s work with Dr. Frisch. She is such an effective therapist, and a real master at applying these techniques. At the same time, I needed a flexible program that would not take too much time out of my extremely busy life. With the CDs, I can listen to them on my way to and from work, as often as I want. This flexibility is key in allowing me to have the time to listen to and digest the material.”
What aspects of the ISP program do you find most of value?
CD courses:
A.P. “There is a lot of important information contained in the audio courses, and there is also the experience of listening to a group of students encountering and digesting it, which helps to integrate the content better.”
M.P. “I enjoy a chance to go through and bounce my understanding off Dr Frisch and the other trainee in my group, and to explore the implications of what it all means in practice. We have recently started doing dyadic work and this very powerful as Dr Frisch’s coaching and deep awareness are enormously helpful.”
Live Mentoring Segments with Dr. Frisch:
A.P. “I enjoy a chance to go through and bounce my understanding off Dr Frisch and the other trainee in my group, and to explore the implications of what it all means in practice. We have recently started doing dyadic work and this very powerful as Dr Frisch’s coaching and deep awareness are enormously helpful.”
M.P. “Dr. Frisch wants to make sure that we have gotten the material, so she asks us to write brief summaries regarding a topic per CD. We then present this material and she makes sure that we understand the topics. This is helpful, and I feel that Dr. Frisch wants me to know and understand the material. It is a very supportive environment. The best part about the mentoring segments is that she supervises us while we work with each other. The experience of being taught by someone who is so masterful is amazing. I feel like each session I learn so much!”
Optional Live Classes
A.P. “These have been enormously valuable in seeing the work in practice and what it all means, demands, and offers. The few classes that I have been able to attend to-date have already deeply informed my practice as a therapist and my aspirations as to how I want to be practicing as I develop further.”
M.P. “The live classes are great. Dr. Frisch is extremely attentive to questions and very responsive to the needs of students in her classes. Again, the best part of the classes is the live demos, when therapists bring in their clients. Dr. Frisch has a great way of intervening and then pulling back, so the student therapists have an opportunity to make effective interventions, even if before her involvement they had been lost, not knowing how to intervene. Discussion of diagnosis, of the effectiveness of certain interventions, and those times when the student therapist missed the mark are extremely fruitful. I always feel like I am learning so much!”
How have the ISP courses changed the way you practice/or will practice?
A.P. . “I have greatly developed my capacity to understand character and how to work with it. I now feel like I know what I should be doing with clients and how to do it, though the process of developing mastery will take many years. In short, I feel a developing clarity, confidence, and sense of competency in my practice.”
M.P. “I am gaining a much better understanding of how to be effective as a therapist. It is easy to feel lost in a session, and Dr. Frisch provides a framework in which the direction of therapy with a given client is clear. Her understanding of character and appropriate interventions is helping me to understand why certain interventions tend to cause defensiveness in particular clients. Moreover, she demonstrates how to retreat from an intervention that does not land, but to not necessarily abandon the topic if it seems to be an important issue for the client. She makes me feel like I can make a mistake, repair it, and come right back with another intervention.”