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I WAS VERY PLEASED TO HAVE been asked to speak at this graduation dinner.1 I must admit at the outset, however, that I am somewhat nervous at the prospect of giving an extended talk during the time between dinner and the events you must all be waiting for impatiently—the awarding of diplomas and the dancing to follow.
Even though I am not of this group in a strict sense, I have been both a candidate who graduated and a member of a faculty which graduated candidates, and so I can join with all of you in celebrating this happy occasion. The occasion itself stimulated me to think over what it is to be an analyst. And I decided to make being an analyst the theme of my talk tonight. Without trying to do a comprehensive job, I plan to review some of the important tensions in the professional life of the contemporary psychoanalyst. I recognize that in one form or another these tensions have existed for analysts almost from the beginning of the development of psychoanalysis. I recognize, too, that in some places at least I may be speaking from what is a purely personal point of view.
The question of what an analyst is may be approached by way of what analysands say we are. They say, for instance, that we are shrinks. Shrink is a terrible misnomer for a psychoanalyst in that it suggests that the analyst transforms passive people by diminishing them, whereas the truth is that our work proceeds in the opposite direction, that is, it helps people transform themselves in a way that expands and enhances their lives. We hear other things from analysands—that we are, to give another example, their fix. One of my patients would say, "I've come here today for my fix, " anticipating each day that by the time he left he would be feeling a little better, a little soothed. He was, of course, seeming to reduce