The Value of Interning

This article originally appeared in the TIRA News & Views Newsletter, Vol. IV, No. III (July 2001)

The Value of Interning

Learning to cook by reading a cookbook and trying to do what it says is a very different experience from learning to cook by watching and working with an experienced cook, as anyone who has tried these two things can tell you. Somewhere in the middle perhaps is taking a cooking class. The class offers the opportunity to learn some codified subset of the total knowledge of the subject along with some hands-on experience and supervision, though less than you'd get as an apprentice or intern. The same can be said for the fields of auto mechanics, medicine, or any other complex set of skills.

Absorbing the data of such a subject and beginning to master its fundamental set of skills is best done by taking classes. Learning all of this material as an apprentice would take too long. Once you have got some data however, and a basic grip on the skills, internship becomes the best way to learn to master that set of data and skills. Whether one-on-one or in a small group, interns benefit from much more individualized attention than they could receive in a class. Because the first stage of learning has been completed in the class, the internship progresses with everyone able to talk the basic language of the subject and move ahead into a better command of application. At some point the student is best served by taking the next workshop or class in the series, acquiring new information and skills to integrate into his knowledge base by further consulting/interning.

Going back to the cooking example, a young woman (my mother), trying to make fudge by carefully following a recipe got disappointing results. Her older sister offered to show her how to do it. As they watched it boil and it reached the critical stage the older sister said, "See, it has to go 'Blop-blop' like that." Seeing the phenomenon accurately identified as it happened gave the younger woman a certainty she could make use of from that time forward. If you have learned to make bread, you have learned the exact feel of the dough when enough flour has been absorbed. Mechanical measuring cannot give you that specific result since humidity and other factors govern how much flour will be needed to complete the dough.

They say about backgammon that you can learn to play it in a few minutes and spend the rest of your life getting good at it. You can learn the basics of TIR in quite a short time and get better and better at applying it as time goes on. Of course you learn a lot just by the experience of applying whatever you have learned in sessions, but working with a supervisor/consultant can accelerate the process significantly. The supervisor knows how to look for things that the intern has not yet learned are there. Interning as a TIR facilitator involves going over what happened in a session and learning from mistakes or from situations that could have been handled in a more effective way.

Supervisors and interns usually work together on case planning for the intern's clients which is another excellent opportunity for learning. Well trained graduates of the three TIR workshops continue to have new insights on application as they work with a supervisor. One can have learned many techniques and still not be fluent in their application. (The larger subject of Metapsychology contains a vast array of tools, some of which work especially well in conjunction with TIR and are taught in the two workshops that follow the basic TIRW.) Acquiring this fluency can be an exciting and rewarding process.

Here are what two of the people I am working with currently have to say;

Being able to consult with you after the workshop has helped me to address specific problems that come up. It has introduced me to a few additional techniques and has filled out my understanding of how to implement techniques, for example, how to better give instructions. The opportunity to consult with you on cases has provided a review of things I learned but had forgotten from the workshops.

Becoming experienced in using TIR is something that takes years. Consulting is part of the process. It is particularly important for people like myself who are not connected to a larger community of people using the techniques.
-- Hannah Frisch

Especially useful to me has been help in understanding End Points, how they differ from one client and situation to another, and also learning more about how to apply the various techniques in different cases.

I have found that supervision from you is absolutely invaluable. I really appreciate it and I find it to make a great deal of difference as sometimes I feel like I'm at a brick wall and then you suggest something and... voila! Results!
-- Stephen Rassi