So, You Want to Be a Therapist?

A number of high school students have e-mailed me with questions about becoming a psychologist/therapist. What is it that they need to learn? Here's a piece of the answer.

All therapists need to become expert in subtext. What is subtext? It is the "between-the-lines" verbal and nonverbal communication between people. Let's look at a well-known poem by Robert Frost to illustrate subtext (one introduced to me by my 12th grade English teacher, Walter Lundahl, in Huntington, N.Y.).

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

(from Immortal Poems of the English Language, Washington Square Press, 1969)

On the surface the story is simple: a man stops by the woods, is enticed by the beauty and peace of his environs, and then moves on. A psychologist, however, would not be satisfied with this "reading," for the subtext is quite different. If you can decipher the subtext, the poem is much darker: a man stops by the woods, thinks about whether to commit suicide, but ultimately decides to move on. What are the clues to this subtext? Here's one. If you read the "text," the last two lines are a simple repetition. Frost, however, would not have used the repetition simply to fill space--he was too crafty a poet to do this. Instead, he left it to the reader to deduce that the lines meant two different things: that he had a long way to go before he would sleep that night, and that he had a "long way to go" before he died.

People often present the same kind of puzzle as Frost's poem. Their words tell one story, but underneath, another story, often darker and more compelling, lies in waiting.

If you want to become a psychologist/therapist you must learn to read and understand subtext, because only through subtext will you hear the second, more telling story.