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MY ASSUMPTION IS THAT THE question we are addressing: Where does a given analyst place him or herself on a continuum "from neutrality to personal revelation?" is more than definitional or idiosyncratically preferential. Rather it is a question about a dynamic issue—the answers being governed by principles or formulations the analyst follows.
I shall discuss the effect of two working principles on the tension between revelation and non-revelation. The first—the nature of the analytic exchange presses toward revelation. The second—the analyst's systematic use of the empathic mode of perception presses toward carefully circumscribing the nature of the revelation.
Let me describe my view of analysis. Analyst and analysand come together to effect a positive change in the analysand (with emphasis on the relief of psychic distress, conscious and unconscious) through understanding in depth the nature of some problem or problems. Analyst and analysand, however, have different perspectives that lead inevitably to different motives; each is consequently under strains that as they interact provide the treatment's major dynamic leverage.
From the analysand's side: He or she will be under all the tensions brought to the analysis as a result of the accumulation of unresolved regulatory disturbances and conflicts from the past. In each analytic session, the analysand will feel pulled toward an internally obligatory full expression of his or her perceived needs and wishes. This sense of "immediate demand" is an analytically necessary part of the experience. But at the same time the analysand will also be drawn by the desire to comply with the goal shared with the analyst, to confine action and interaction to exploring meanings.
From the analyst's side: He or she must sense the analysand's wishes and needs as well as his or her reactive inclinations in response to them; but the analyst must restrain a direct reaction. Instead, analysts