Discussion

THIS IS A FASCINATING topic and adds to the discourse on counter-transference, a special case of counter-transference, inherent in the analysis of the rich, etc. Apparently the editor presented this paper because of the myriad doors it knocks on, not the voices in the rooms behind them.

The point about analysts' name-dropping being similar to patients' dreaming of intimacy with the famous is well taken. Is there literature about this? In the halls of a training institute we learn, too easily, and so well, that analysts are subject to the same needs as their patients; among others, avarice, competitiveness, nepotism, power. Let the analysts look to that. What more can we say about the patient when this occurs in the analyst? What has the patient recapitulated with the analyst? I have in mind Tauber's idea that counter-transference data can be used, not as confessional, but as counter-communication, and not necessarily verbalized. Meltzer has written succinctly that self-analysis is the analyst's interminable tool. Dr. Wahl evidently follows the counter-transference-as-resistance school of thinking, something to be eliminated, and misses what can be part of that delicate finesse of the process, which generates the excitement of a genuine intimate relationship.

There's the whole issue of social amenities (Freud, it is said, helped the ladies on with their overcoats), which obviously is analyzable, and with those to whom the deferential aspects of a relationship are taken for granted, is of evident significance. Who opens the door? Who enters or leaves the room first? Does the entry and exit choreography vary? Does one shake hands, etc.? It's not that we take these for granted or that no one has ever thought about them, but that we rarely inquire about the patient's perceptual experience and its referents, or even our own. The social expectations based on various class identities are certainly germane. The context in which tenderness is permissible (read