Alumni

Reading Lolita in Lake Forest: 
Memoir of a Psychology Internship Class

By Kathryn Rindskopf Dohrmann
Lecturer in Psychology

“I decided to indulge myself and fulfill a dream.…I invited [my students] to come to my home every Thursday morning to discuss literature.”
—Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books.*

Unlike author Azar Nafisi’s Iranian students, my class of psychology interns was not reading literature—not even Lolita. We were living under conditions far different from those in Tehran during the era of the Ayatollah Khomeini. And while Nafisi held a class in her home for two years, we came together in my living room for only one semester. Here, however, the dissimilarities end. In truth, by inviting this group of students into my home, I indulged myself, and like Nafisi, fulfilled a dream.

In the summer of 2004, after finishing Nafisi’s bestseller, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, I began to fantasize about meeting with a class at my house. I had been given a new teaching responsibility—leading a seminar for junior and senior psychology students who were doing internships. Field placements for the students included a middle-school gifted program, the human-performance laboratory of a naval base, child and adolescent psychiatric programs, a hospital ward for the chronically ill, treatment programs for neglected and abused children, a Montessori school, a breastfeeding promotion organization, and a rape crisis center.

By holding the seminar at my home, I fantasized, we could find common ground in these experiences, solve problems together, and become sounding boards for one another. Some of the interns lived on campus and some commuted; some knew each other and some did not. I wanted them to become a cohesive working group. My living room seemed as if it might be the key.

“I wonder if you can imagine us. We are sitting around the iron-and-glass table,…the yellow and red leaves reflected….”

 All of us were a little awkward at first, but routines quickly fell into place. Tea, coffee, and sweets were in the kitchen. Those who came early learned where to move the chairs and where the cups were kept. Our behavioral routines became established, too. The students practiced active listening and constructive brainstorming. I practiced—more and more—keeping silent.

I knew we were on the right path when the intern at the rape crisis center asked for help. Her 40 hours of training were now finished. She was on call from midnight to 6 a.m. and would be going to hospital emergency rooms to assist survivors. She worried aloud about traveling to and from campus in those dark and lonely hours. As the group warmed to the question, reassured her, and offered helpful suggestions, I saw signs of wisdom and compassion.

The questions, as varied as the placement sites and as the interns themselves, kept coming during our afternoons together: What do you do if you feel that a nurse isn’t responding when a child needs help? Why should gifted children, who already seem advantaged, be given special classes and activities? How can you be non-judgmental during visits to homes of children who have been abused and neglected? What are good ways to reach and teach a baby who cannot speak or move? What kind of art activities can you plan when you have no budget to buy materials? How can you help new sailors to better learn essential, even life-protecting, skills?

Sometimes, on those brilliant autumn afternoons in Lake Forest, it seemed as if these insightful students drew from everything they’d ever learned, in and out of the psychology classroom, creating—in author Nafisi’s words — a dialogue between public and private worlds.

“…the novels led us finally to question and prod our own realities….”

 For Nafisi, everything followed from the power of the novels that she shared with her students. Similarly, the power of an internship is derived primarily from the internship itself. The Psychology Department internship program, with its accompanying seminar, began more than 30 years ago. It was conceived as an opportunity to apply classroom learning to actual problems, to test interests and skills, and to weigh the fit of expectation and reality.

It is rare for dilemmas in behavioral settings to be resolved quite as neatly as they are in textbooks. The seminar component of the internship was designed partially in response to that phenomenon. More importantly, however, the seminar is a mechanism for dealing with the singular stresses and intensities of many psychologically-based internships. Students may choose placements in environments where individuals are damaged, physically and/or emotionally, where lives are filled with chaos and struggle. Helping students learn to cope with such situations is an essential seminar task. After describing the stressfulness of her internship, one student wrote: “It was a relief to be able to ask for opinions, share successes and frustrations, and learn from one another…. We needed the class to relax, unwind, and unload.”

The internships left deep impressions. In their final papers, students wrote comments such as: “The lessons I learned will follow me for a lifetime.…I gained insights into my strengths and limitations, both personally and professionally….This experience has helped me to solidify and shape my career goals.…The most useful lessons in psychology are not learned from textbooks but rather from first-hand experience….”

One student stated: “I would recommend this internship to other psychology majors as long they are willing to go into it with an open mind and an open heart….The real learning and growing will be their own, for it is the children who are the greatest teachers for the interns.”

“…seven of my best and most committed students…each gained an outline and a shape, becoming her own inimitable self….”

And so, in retrospect, it seems that that the interns were teaching me. As the semester progressed, my admiration for them grew. My regard was shared by their supervisors, who entrusted them with responsibilities such as leading counseling groups, writing case recommendations, and designing classroom activities to be used with new Navy recruits. One student rose to the challenge of something quite outside of her own experience: writing a newsletter for fathers on issues surrounding breastfeeding. Another now assists with training at the center where she interned and continues there as a volunteer.
 
“Our world in the living room became our sanctuary, our self-contained universe…a rare kind of time…our moment of pause….”

 Given the power of the internship experience, the usefulness of the seminar, and the admirable qualities of the interns, one could ask why we didn’t simply meet in a classroom. Did the living room really matter?

The only thing I know for sure is that it mattered to me. I was “at home,” at ease, content with a cup of tea and my cats, indulging myself in the pleasure of conversation with students. The seminar became my own rare kind of time, my own pause.

“I had met them all in the magical space of my own living room…they knew my family, my kitchen...the way I walked and talked at home....”

As she looked at books on the coffee table, one student discovered that she and I both enjoy the Persian poet Rumi. In the trappings of my kitchen, another found commonality in our preference for fine teas and all things organic. After I displayed a gift from a friend, a handmade book, a third student shared the art she was making for her design class. Once a week, we could come out from behind our desks and step away from our roles as teacher and student.

“…like errant genies evaporating into their bottles….”

I have a new group this semester, interning at some of the same sites, but also at different ones: an eating-disorders clinic, a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children and adolescents, an autism treatment program. One is shadowing a courthouse psychologist as he counsels sex offenders and administers anger-management programs. We continue to meet at my house.

Classrooms are places of memory, full of the ghosts of students—and their professors—who have come and gone over the years. Living rooms are full of ghosts, too—of family and friends, the daily and the eventful. I am happy to add my interns—those errant genies—to the memories in this house. 

For an account of Lake Forest College Psychology interns at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, go to: www.flagshipnews.com/archives_2005/feb172005_19.shtml.

Kathryn Rindskopf Dohrmann was educated at Iowa State University and Columbia University. She has been teaching in the College’s Psychology Department since 1975.