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THE IMPACT OF THE ANALYST'S GENDER on the analytic process is most often described in transferential/countertransferential terms. The impact of culture-linked gender characteristics on psychoanalytic treatment has been largely ignored by the psychoanalytic literature. In general, attention to the impact of the analyst's gender
on the psychoanalytic process has developed slowly over the years. This despite the fact that everyday practice has acknowledged that analyst's gender may be an important variable in the treatment. In the absence of specific patient preferences referrals are often made on the basis of some judgment that this person would work better with a male or a female analyst. In a second analysis the analyst chosen is frequently of the opposite sex from the first and training institutes commonly require experience with patients of both genders and supervision by both male and female analysts.
Given the original tenet of the analyst as a blank screen who simply serves as a mirror to transference distortions, attention to the analyst's sex was clearly unnecessary. Concern with the socalled "real" analyst was slow to emerge despite Stone's (1954) comment that "we do not know all about the dynamic relationship between transference and reality. Resemblances have indubitable importance … Transference requires some degree of resemblance. One may develop a father transference to a man, perhaps to a woman, but not to a rocking chair" (p. 588).
In the early 50's this view was certainly a radical departure from classical analysis; nevertheless it stopped short of examining the reciprocal impact of gender on the analytic process. Even more recent discussions of gender issues have centered on transference in the more traditional sense in which the sex of the analyst