ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a personal account of a journey to pursue psychoanalytic training. It compares this journey, to the journey a patient takes when he or she decides to express a demand for analysis. The journey has conscious and unconscious motivations that led the author to formulate a demand for training. Through the author's work in the International Psychoanalytical Studies Organization (IPSO) she have heard many stories of candidates that had to break systemic barriers to be able to go after their dreams to practice the "Talking Cure", as Bertha Pappenheim once coined. The author spent more time actively encouraging the patient to talk about feelings of shame in connection to treatment and stigma associated to mental health, and it would pay off. It became easier for the patient to settle and begin associating more freely during the session in the beginning stages of the treatment.
