ABSTRACT
Conventionally we tend to conceive of graduate education as a linear development from uncouth ignorance to knowledge and grace. This straight, or possibly diagonal, or staggered, ascent to maturity may be an accurate representation of the intellectual processes during the graduate years. However, learning is much more than an intellectual process. In the graduate school it is a series of emotional involvements which are themselves a vital communication between students and teachers and which may constitute a resistance against the intellectual process. In discussing the pattern of graduate school, I would like to treat it as an emotional rather than an intellectual experience. The substantive content of graduate education has been dealt with extensively; however, the essence of any learning experience is an intrapsychic process.*
