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Given the emphasis on conf identiality in the recent psychoanalytic literature, it may come as a real surprise to learn that the first legal proceeding involving a psychotherapeutic breach of conf identiality did not occur until 1952, and that the word confidentiality did not appear in any psychoanalytic journal written in English until 1961. Although confidentiality was always implicitly essential to the conduct of psychoanalysis, a review of the bibliography of this volume indicates that it did not become the focus of significant attention until the writings of Martin Stein and Robert Stoller in the late 1980s. Even now, we are more likely to attend to the causes and consequences of violations of conf identiality than to the conditions necessary to its establishment and maintenance.
This volume grew out of a conference held in Montreal in October 2000, and in their introduction the editors note the importance of two events in their decision to organize this meeting: (1) the publication of The New Informants by Bollas and Sundelson in 1995 and (2) the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Jaffee v Redmond in 1996. In their book, Bollas and Sundelson, both of whom have contributed chapters to the present volume, detail the erosion of psychoanalytic confidentiality, argue for the necessity of absolute confidentiality for psychoanalysis, and propose the establishment of a “new profession,” the social therapist. Social therapists would enter an advocacy relationship with their clients and, in addition to exploring their clients' problems and feelings, would be required to report criminal activities. Psychoanalysts, by contrast, would be forbidden from breaking confidentiality. In the case of Jaffee v Redmond, Karen Beyer, a psychotherapist, treated a policewoman, Mary Lu Redmond, who had shot and killed a man while on duty. Both Beyer and Redmond were employed by the same village. The