Commentaries

The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked goodnatured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt it ought to be treated with respect (Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland).

I want very much to comment on Jay Greenberg's “The Analyst's Participation: A New Look.” The problem is, to my great dismay, hard as I try, I can't find my way into the logic of his thesis. I don't recognize the landmarks (land mines?) of his argument; and, worse yet, I keep finding myself standing in the middle of his objections, which, it seems to me, he has himself created by virtue of promoting them. For example, his rendering of particular interactions in four well-known relational vignettes distorts them in such a way that it makes each author-analyst's behavior appear outrageous (Gerson lies, Davies lusts, Ghent covers up, and Frederickson screams). Although the distinct theoretical material that fuels each vignette is missing from Greenberg's portrayal of these works, he asks us to believe that they all sound the same. He needs us to accept this premise in order to argue that contemporary relational analysts throw standard technique out the window because they believe that each analytic dyad is unique, and yet their cases get written up in a form that comes out very much the same. Now, mind you, Greenberg asserts that he is a fellow contributor to this “trend.” Much in the spirit of Freud, who handled the Nazis with his written statement, “I can certainly recommend the Gestapo to everyone,” Greenberg allows that these vignettes are important contributions to the field. But then he likens them to prescriptive “morality plays” that pressure us all to go forth and respond likewise.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.… “In that direction,” the Cat said, waving its right paw round, “lives a Hatter: and in that direction,” waving the other paw,