L E A R N IN G T O R E A D T E A L E A V E S
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students take are closely guarded secrets. They must be. Broad dissemination of the material covered in the courses and open admission for graduate students of all academic stripes would not only demystify the clinical courses but would subject them to the same degree of academic rigor-and respect for the standards of science-as any other graduate courses. Amalgams of rhetoric and religion, most clinical courses would dissipate in the thin air of reason. What would become of the initiates if the rites of initiation were open to the public? A priesthood without mystery is a priesthood without authority. T h e authority of psychotherapists is absolutely essential if they are to maintain the enviable position of power in law, medicine, and education they occupy today. Who would let persons with no authority decide that a serial rapist is cured, that a murderer will kill no more, that a killer was forced into the act by childhood sexual abuse? What government or insurance company would let persons with no authority bill them for millions of hours of "therapy," for billions of dollars of treatment? Surely not my government or insurance company. If clinical psychology is to maintain the fiction that it knows what it is doing with respect to all these difficult issues, a mantle of secrecy over the content of their courses is essential.
Kneeling at the Distant Feet of the Master Most professors who train clinicians would probably agreealthough not perhaps for the same reasons-that you can't teach the subject solely in a classroom setting. So, beginning the second year, much of the future clinician's time is spent actually doing psychotherapy under supervision. This is the guild model of learning. T h e student is an apprentice to the master. Each week the student sees a patient for individual therapy, or two or three (or nine or ten, depending on the program), and/or a therapy group, and then meets with the supervisor to discuss each case. T h e supervisor gives the apprentice the benefit of his or her years of experience in practice, helping with interpretation and making suggestions for therapy. T h e guild approach to learning a craft has a long and honorable history. It is too bad that the clinicians' claim to have adopted this method of training is a fraud. A true apprentice works in the master's shop, observing the master, copying the master, being shown on the