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There are currents of moral ideas which are partly philosophical and partly something less precise, changes in public consciousness…
It is certainly not easy, and perhaps it is not possible, to calculate the real effect upon men's lives of any new system of moral ideas and of any new philosophy…
The more fundamental and overriding assessments, in relation to which all other assessments of persons are subsidiary and conditional, we call moral assessments, just because we count them as unconditional and overriding… When we assess ourselves or others in some limited role or capacity, as performing well or ill in that role or capacity, the assessment is not fundamental and unconditional; the assessment gives guidance only to someone who wants to have that role or to act in that capacity or who wants to make use of someone who does.
Stuart Hampshire (1973; italics added)
APPARENTLY IT HAS BECOME MORE FREQUENT in recent years for a candidate to openly object to the fact that his analyst sends reports about his analysis to the education committee. It is not difficult for the analyst to understand the candidate's fear of exposure, censure, and disaccreditation or to discern the narcissistic resistances and the inhibited exhibitionism that play significant roles in the determination of such objections. If the analyst has not, in fact, abused his reportorial function, analytic work with such complaints and the demand that the analyst should not so report can be exceedingly fruitful.
Perhaps most training analysts are somewhat more familiar with another version of those same resistances; namely, an unquestioning overidealization of the analyst and the analysis. In these