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Given the task of expressing my opinion about the analyst's analytic identity, I can do no better than point out two paradoxes which characterise it. I prefer the expression ‘analytic identity’ to the commonly used ‘identity of the analyst’, because the former, unlike the second, is able - by means of an abstract concept - to highlight particular psychic functions that do not refer to the personal psychology of the analyst, which is best kept in brackets in analytic work. By using the expression the ‘analytic identity of the analyst’ I want to highlight the functions of the psyche that contradict the logical evidence of common sense.
In my opinion, a first paradox is the illusion that the psychoanalyst is always a psychoanalyst, recognised by himself, by his analysands, by his colleagues in his psychoanalytic institution, and by the world at large. This illusion is necessary for surviving both the analysands' negative transferential attacks, and their extreme and scarcely bearable idealisations. The paradox lies in the fact that the illusion of being a psychoanalyst is accompanied by the disillusionment which the psychoanalyst often experiences. If the heirs of Freud still want access to psychoanalysis in its original state and the same time do not want to stop transforming it, they have to reinvent it day after day in their consulting rooms. I am referring to a constant oscillation between illusion and disillusion, theoretical and clinical, which happens over the course of the analytic experience.
Indeed, during his own daily experience, the psychoanalyst inevitably encounters discords and crises within the unconscious paradigm by which he recognises himself as a psychoanalyst.
Many years ago, an old analyst told me in confidence about a strange experience he had sometimes had: in analysis he felt like a confessor who went on hearing confession even in those moments when he felt he had no faith. With this metaphor, he meant to underline the fact that the psychoanalyst