Beginning the Journey: What Motivates Therapists to Join the Profession?
5.3 Entering the Field of Psychology
5.3.2 Interest
When therapists spoke of the factors that influenced their decision to join the pro- fession, a significant theme that emerged was interest; this has been illustrated in Ameesh’s transcript above. Interest in the human mind, in healing, in reading and in working with children, have led therapists to pursue the helping profession.
Understanding the human mind
Interest in how the human mind worked, and being fascinated by human dynam- ics, was discussed by almost all participants as facilitating their decision to pursue the field and enter the profession. Ishrat, a practising psychoanalyst, like Ameesh, discussed her fascination with the human mind and how it worked. True to her analytic frame, she brought out how rich and varied the inner world of each indi- vidual was; and how the mind and the unconscious were something that intrigued her, drawing her to pursue the field of psychology.
Understanding human motivation, how people function and how they operate are the subject matter of psychology, and participants reported wanting to work in an area that would allow them to find answers to these questions. Sarah, amongst others, mentioned, ‘I was always fascinated by the way people think, behave and figure things out … lots of times I would not be able to figure out why someone is doing this or not doing this, how is it working’.
Apart from wanting to understand what motivated people to behave and act in the ways they did, the participants spoke about how there were questions in their mind about what motivated people to change. Looking around them, they found that people were distressed and going through difficulties and were unable to cope with them, or were experiencing distress and unhappiness; leading them to wonder about questions of change and what motivated people to change. Sarah shared her confusion about growing up in her family, wondering why some people did what they did and over the years she began to look for those answers in psychology.
The findings obtained in the present study corroborate well with those made by Farber et al. (2005), who utilized two approaches, in an attempt to answer the
question ‘Why do people become psychotherapists?’ (p. 1009). Apart from review- ing the literature on therapist motivations, they explored pathways to becoming a psychotherapist by considering the career trajectories of therapists. They found that therapists mentioned curiosity about the ‘whys of behaviour—why individu- als think, feel, and act as they do’ (Farber et al. 2005, p. 1010). They linked this psychological mindedness—an endless curiosity and introspection on why people behave, act and feel the way they do—to psychological skills that helped these individuals around people and eventually motivated them to seek a career in psy- chotherapy and counselling.
Healing people
A couple of the participants mentioned that healing people and providing care and treatment to those who were suffering was what drew them to the field of psy- chology. Hina discussed how her need to understand people and wanting to heal them made her a therapist. Jiya shared a similar experience, and recalled how as a teenager, she saw people confused and not knowing what to do, and she thought to herself that this could be because people did not know whom to approach, and that led her to vision herself taking on a therapist role. For Samira it was a larger aim of helping people to come out of their misery. She also mentioned wonder- ing to herself why people were so unhappy and distressed, when there was abun- dance and joy all around. She remembered these questions haunting her; ‘Why are people so miserable, why do they want to be miserable, is there a choice they are making or accepting?’
Grappling with questions of human suffering and pain and alleviating human distress could be critical factors drawing individuals to the healing profession.
Beatty (2012) found that one of the popular motivations mentioned in her sample of 30 psychotherapy students in Ireland, was altruism. Bager-Charlson (2010) also discussed that altruism could be an important factor for joining the profession, as being connected with and accepted by other people could be highly rewarding.
Norcross and Farber (2005) shared that though the conscious motivation may be to help others, there could be other, not so conscious, motives that people might have that they might need to be aware of. The motive of altruism being socially desir- able and acceptable is usually the reason that is most often stated.
The scepticism in Norcoss and Farber’s discussion of the motive of altruism finds resonance in the study by Richardson et al. (2009). They asked professional counselling and psychotherapy trainers in Australia about what some of the pos- sible reasons were for people not to become a therapist; or what people needed to reflect on before entering the field. The researchers found that 35.1 % trainers cau- tioned against the urge of ‘wanting to rescue’ others or to ‘fix people’s problems’.
Whether altruism or the need to heal others is the ‘right’ impetus to joining the profession or not cannot be said; at the minimum, an awareness of altruism as a motive would be critical, as therapist motivation and needs could deeply impact the therapeutic relationship and process.
Passion for reading
Most therapists discussed an early interest in reading, specifically in reading books on psychology, as a factor contributing to their entering the field of psychology.
Availability of reading material, either through books at home or the fact that they were in a city where there was easy access to books and libraries, allowed them to read and discover the subject. Ameesh mentioned how his interest in reading and the availability of abnormal psychology books at home got him interested in the subject. Samira discussed her passion to read in great detail in her interview, discussing how she used to read everything, ‘From religious books, and I was in a Jewish school so learning about the Jewish religion, to stories, to Nancy Drew, Enid Blyton’. She spoke of how she would scavenge the street bookseller collec- tions to find cheap deals on psychology books and confessed to even having stolen money from home to buy the then popular Russian books. Rita shared that she kept reading all the books she could so she could find answers to how the human mind worked. It was through reading and books that Rita found out about therapy and it was this that drew her to take up psychotherapy as a profession. Farber et al.
(2005) have illustrated and discussed the role intellectual curiosity and an early interest in reading played in a therapist’s career choice.
Working with children
Jiya and Ishrat discussed how their interest in working with children had led to them entering the profession. During her second year in college Ishrat had to decide the subject that she would major in. The choice had to be made between literature and psychology; and she was inclined more towards psychology as she felt that it would help her work with children. Her interest in working with chil- dren was critical in her entering the field of psychology and then training in child psychotherapy.
While Ishrat shared her desire to work with children, Jiya discussed how being aware of the challenges experienced by less privileged children influenced her choice. Jiya wanted to work with underprivileged children, and children who had lost their parents. Her interest motivated her to interact with teachers and princi- pals in schools where there were children from underprivileged backgrounds so she could be more certain about her choice.
Interestingly, both Ishrat and Jiya initially worked with children after they trained as therapists, though over a period of time they had also started working with adults. Jiya worked with children in schools; subsequently, she practiced with a not for profit organisation working with children who had experienced abuse.
Ishrat had trained in psychoanalysis, and focused on observation studies of infants;
additionally she conducted play therapy sessions for children and her outreach programmes also focused on child mental health.