In these Pages…

Ever since Freud's “Recommendations” in 1912 in which he warned against the dangers of therapeutic ambition, analysts have been reluctant to allow their own expectations and goals for analysands to enter the analytic process.* We have struggled with his injunction. Yet how is it possible for the analyst to prevent expectations and goals for the patient from disturbing professional neutrality? Kenneth Winarick opens these pages of the Journal with a scholarly, penetrating, and altogether useful analysis of this longstanding question. As he notes, there is an increasing recognition of the unavoidable influence of the analyst's subjectivity on the analyst's neutrality. Claims of unbiased influence are more and more likely to evoke skepticism. Winarick suggests that expectations, crystallized in an image of future potential, have a special role in therapeutic action. He explores the many ways expectations and bias impact the analytic process and affect therapeutic action.

In his discussion, Roger Rahtz firmly approves of Winarick's consideration of this matter. Rahtz shows the kinds of dilemmas that may arise in the treatment of children and in the analysis of psychoanalytic candidates-in-training. In a brief clinical vignette, Rahtz demonstrates the value of a clinical stance that intercepts impingements arising from the analyst's expectations for a patient who is ambivalently wishing for, and fearing, loss of autonomy.

Whereas Winarick and Rahtz carry us over familiar theoretical terrain, helpfully challenging and extending our views, Richard Chessick transports us to an altogether different domain of intellectual experience. The concept of phenomenology is relatively unknown in the United States. It has much to offer in application to psychiatric diagnosis and to psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic treatment. Chessick's paper clarifies the concept of phenomenology and offers a working definition of it for psychoanalysts. He illustrates its value for clinical practice,