Career and Personal Role Models, Heroes, and Mentors

For me role models are people we choose to mirror in our life’s journey. Heroes are those we highly admire and often idealize. Mentors predominantly function in the teaching and coaching role. One person may embody one or more of these prototypes at a time, so some of my characterizations may appear fuzzy at times due to overlapping.

Role models and heroes often change with different stages of life. In my latency years, my heroes were cowboys, especially Roy Rogers; the Phantom, an awesome, fearless cartoon character; and Superman. At this stage, I do not remember what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I do know that I never wanted to be a fireman or policeman.

In my preteens and teens, I loved to hear the singing of crooner Frankie Laine, especially the song “Jezebel.” Also, during this time period, rooting for the New York Yankees baseball team was a passion. I worshipped all its team members, especially Joe DiMaggio and pitcher Whitey Ford. What I wanted to be when I grew up, however, was not a baseball player, but rather a professional pop singer like Frankie Laine, or like the radio broadcaster baseball announcer Mel Allen of the New York Yankees.

Occasionally our heroes become our models. For example, a middle-aged patient of mine had cancer in his late teens. After successful treatment, he perceived his oncolo-

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gist as having saved his life. This doctor was his hero. His physician-hero became his role model to the extent that he went on to become a knowledgeable and compassionate chiropractor.

While it is only infrequently that our heroes become our main role model, it is true that many of the attributes of our heroes become aspects of our role modeling. For example, the poet Walt Whitman is one of my heroes; yet, I have no desire to live like him. However, he has influenced my role-modeling by his choice to express his observational powers in writing, which in his case was free-flowing poetry.

Our first role models are our parents, for their behavior and our dependence on them, which is our first life experience. Even if their behavior is not exemplary, out of familiarity, loyalty, and needing their love, we often hold on to them as role models for too long and sometimes forever. As therapists, we often hear our patients’ surprise when they are upset when they become aware of how they are repeating some abhorred qualities of their parents.

My father was my first role model. From his influence, I have incorporated the importance of education, his emphasis on moderation, his value in stable family life, his analytical mind, and importance of reputation in the community. He was an attorney and a municipal court judge. I also inherited his sense of humor, although his humor sometimes descended to puns that were not of high quality.

Thus, it is not a surprise that after college, I attended law school. That was based on identifying with my father’s masculine yang side. After law school, I went on to obtain a master’s degree in social work, a decision that was partially based on my mother’s kindness and compassion, my feminine, nurturing yin side.

After my graduate school training in social work was

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completed, I started a career in law and solely practiced law for ten years, first with my father and then several years later in my own private practice. At the same time, I commenced individual and group psychotherapy. My therapist was a psychiatrist who was just finishing his program at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City.

In his waiting room on a table there was a sculpture of Rodin’s “The Thinker.” The Thinker was sitting bent over, looking at the ground in deep thought. I was impressed and awed by this figure whom I perceived to be reflective and curious, willing to face his conflicts and demons with curiosity and courage.

My first therapist was my second career role model. In my two years of treatment with him, I learned about the world of the unconscious and my own hidden world. He emphasized the analysis of my dreams. From him, I was inspired to read the books of therapists such as Eric Fromm, Karen Horney, Viktor Frankel, Rollo May, and Harry Stack Sullivan.

I idealized my therapist. I wanted to be like him, listening to people and helping to solve their conflicts and problems; he rose to the level of a hero.

During these ten years, I also started a life-long spiritual path, strongly influenced by ancient Indian wisdom and philosophy. I taught yoga and meditation, and studied under a guru for many years. Now, not only was the world of the unconscious open to my experience, but studying and meditating in the area of the super-conscious. In addition to the statue of “The Thinker” I saw as my role model, there entered a statue of Buddha, sitting in silence with eyes closed, looking inward and with a blissful face.

While practicing law had its good points, I knew that only being a lawyer would not be fulfilling; for me, it lacked

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passion. Thoughts of changing career directions crossed my mind. In addition to thinking about becoming a psychotherapist, I mulled over becoming an academic in the intellectual field of religious and spiritual studies.

After ten years as an attorney I needed to make a decision as to a change of career direction. I decided that my true passion was in humanism, psychotherapy, and the relationship between therapy and spirituality. I decided to obtain training in psychoanalysis part-time, while continuing my law practice.

It took me eight years to obtain my certification as a lay analyst from the New Jersey Psychoanalytic Institute. There I had many opportunities to follow role models who showed me how I would eventually think as a psychoanalyst. There were many mentors to observe: my Freudian analyst, and a host of supervisors and fellow candidates. I can’t say that my analyst was my hero since over the many years of analysis the personal weaknesses and imperfections of the analyst are bound to be revealed. By the end of the analysis, any negative qualities and weaknesses of the analyst are hopefully accepted maturely. Although he was not my hero, many of his attributes influenced me to want to view him as my role model in being an analyst. That is, his concentrated ability to listen, intellectual and emotional curiosity, patience, and setting the frame.

During my training, certain mentors were role models for my practice. One control analyst helped me to take myself less seriously and enjoy the sessions more. Another control analyst’s enthusiasm for Freud and help to better understand and appreciate Freud were invaluable. The writers and theoreticians that most influenced me in addition to Freud were Donald Winnicott and William Ronald Fairbairn from the English object-relations school of thought.

The fact that I had two concurrent inner growth paths

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was often confusing. The theories and purposes on the quest towards happiness and fulfillment in psychotherapy and spirituality, of course, had underlying differences. When I brought up events like meditation and other spiritual dealings with my spiritual teacher, my analyst took a dim view of my need for all that. Similarly, when I told my spiritual teacher about psychoanalysis, he conveyed his skepticism about the relevance of delving into past family history, dreams, and free associations.

After becoming a certified analyst, I still continued as a lawyer until my therapy practice grew such that I saw patients full-time. After my certification, my spiritual practices also continued, but I opened up to learn more and practice spiritual principles from Buddhism and mysticism based on the Old and New Testaments. So, in my personal life there was less conflict between pursuing spiritual paths and psychological growth. I had more conviction that the two approaches were not mutually exclusive.

In 1994, I wrote an article that discussed the similarity of and differences between psychotherapy and spirituality. I concluded that the longer I observed the dual paths of psychotherapy and spirituality, the more I was impressed by the tenacity of the emotional obstacles preventing happiness and freedom. I also concluded that more harm is done to us by not accepting our “humanity” than by not realizing our “spirituality.” Furthermore, there were many people that were attempting spiritual paths that were really defending against repressed material of childhood conflicts. This has been called “spiritual bypassing.” (An article on this subject can be read on my website www.michaelisaacs.net.)

Over the years of doing psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy, there were new role models, heroes, and mentors. I came to appreciate that on occasion my patients themselves were heroes, role models, and mentors! Here, I

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will only mention two psychoanalysts that influenced me significantly as therapist role models. One was Joseph Weiss, the author of How Psychotherapy Works. He emphasizes the role of guilt in pathology, client testing of the therapist, and how the therapist can pass these tests. The other was Thomas Hora, a psychoanalytically trained existential psychiatrist and spiritual teacher.

In my later stage of life, I came to realize that the gender nature of my role models, heroes, and mentors had changed. In my earlier stages mostly all of my analysts, mentors, heroes, role models, and spiritual teachers had been men. Now, they are predominantly women. In one psychospiritual group that I have been attending for many years all but two members are women. This pattern of respecting knowledgeable and nurturing women has helped me in the transference to receive some modeling that my mother was incapable of giving me.

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