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Psychoanalysis, from its beginnings in Studies on Hysteria, has been defined by its preoccupation with what is not known. Our central premise is that the unknown causes the illnesses that we treat; the idea defines both our theory and our praxis.
That psychoanalysis is deep down a practice founded on ethics may seem obvious, even trivial, and, for that reason, be seriously underestimated.
The analyst you become is you and you alone.
Psychoanalysis as a discipline is based on what is not known. It has been argued in fact that Freud's singular contribution to the field of ethics is his straightforward acknowledgment of the unconscious (unknown) determinants of human behavior (Wallwork 1991). If ethics has been implicit in psychoanalysis from its beginnings in what is not known, it also poses an infernal question: How do we as analysts take (ethical) responsibility for aspects of our own behavior and motivations that inevitably remain unknown to us?
It is paradoxical in this context that almost everything we read in psychoanalysis is written as if we know (understand) what we're doing as analysts. This is partially true, of course, but also in very significant ways untrue. None of us know who we are as people in any fundamental sense, and many of us become psychoanalysts in an effort to find out. Once