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To the Editor:
In my letter published in the December 1994 issue of the Journal, I remarked that Naomi Rucker was “treading on dangerous ground” when she asserted in her March 1994 paper “Exploratory Thoughts on Wisdom, Intimacy, and Analytic Relatedness” that the central psychoanalytic concepts of transference and countertransference on which psychoanalytic therapy has been based are not what generations of analysts have thought them to be (that is, the expectable unfolding of analyzable elements of the patient's psyche), but are iatrogenic and pathological products of the analyst's aloofness and inadequate personal involvement. From this premise she went on to urge more intimate personal sharing by the analyst. I expressed concern not simply about her ideas, with which I disagree, but about her mode of presentation, which did not clearly and precisely specify her reasons for redefining transference and countertransference, or what exactly she was advocating as more personal involvement by the analyst, and was not documented by illustrative case material from her practice. In her reply, Dr. Rucker does not appear to disagree with my observations, but objects to the inferences I draw from them on the grounds that her paper was merely a preliminary exploration in the spirit of