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Becoming an analyst or an analytic therapist is complete with intellectual challenge, emotional struggle, and personal transformation.1 An important element of clinical training involves developing an analyzing ego (Sterba, 1934; Greenson, 1967), second self (Schafer, 1983), or a capacity for self-reflective responsiveness (Mitchell, 1997) that is suited to performing clinical work. According to Schafer, the second self refers to an analyst's way of being with patients. He suggests that if an analyst is to help patients in a deep way, he2 must develop the capacity to “express his humanity analytically.” This is one of the more demanding aspects of clinical training, though students are greatly aided in this effort by identifying with ideas and values of an established psychoanalytic tradition; in this manner students develop professional identities without having to “make themselves up totally” (Schafer, 1983, p. 286). This paper presents a developmental view of the training process in an effort to understand more clearly how an analyst might use his unconscious material in clinical work. The paper will focus on how an analyst's unconscious is informed by clinical training in such a way that allows him to facilitate change in patients, and how a spirit of openness to his own unconscious material allows him to become increasingly emotionally available to patients. Conversely, the paper will also explore how an analyst's beliefs about mental health reflect his own experiences in analysis and supervision such that he may misunderstand or disregard important aspects of a patient's world.
Ralph Greenson (1967) recognized that an analyst's unconscious is both a vital avenue for understanding his patient's unconscious and a key instrument