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The psychoanalytic literature in recent years has begun to reflect a need to understand the effects of real events in analysts' lives upon treatment A number of contributions have dealt with such issues as the relocation of the practitioner (Martinez 1989), the analyst who suffers from serious illness (Schwartz and Silver 1990), and pregnancy in the female clinician, as they affect the type of material patients bring to psychoanalytic sessions (Basson 1988). There is little doubt that these real events sometimes bring to the fore conflictual material in many analyses that probably would not have easily surfaced in the ordinary course of events.
A related issue that has received less attention in the literature is those changes that each analyst undergoes while forging out his or her unique analytic style These developments produce modifications in analytic technique that often alter the type of issues that patients bring. As clinicians we are aware of changes in our colleagues and ourselves due to shifts in theoretical positions, greater clinical experience, and the development of our own particular manners of relating to patients. The emergence of an analytic style is a complex process that involves identifications with one's training analyst, supervisors, and theoretical frameworks, as well as particular character issues that each clinician brings to the situation (Kantrowitz 1992, 1993) These factors are juxtaposed against a sort of “individuation” process in each analyst, which often results in greater flexibility, less concern with rules, and modification of theoretical and technical positions more in keeping with one's own character (Renik 1993, Jacobs 1994) I have referred to this in another context as the loosening of our “psychoanalytic work superegos” (Rosenbloom 1992). Two illustrations in the analytic literature are striking in this regard