Discussion

ASPECIAL EMPHASIS ON MAINTAINING VITALITY in long term psychoanalytic treatment was one of the hallmarks of the clinical views of Erich Fromm, who insisted that the analyst was at least as responsible as the patient for the treatment's directness, truth and immediacy (e.g., Tauber, 1959). If the treatment was lifeless, Fromm turned his attention to what the analyst was or was not doing about it. What I have to say is in this spirit. I will make some general points about curiosity and then discuss them in the more specific context of Dr. Friedman's clinical material.

The meaning and impact of what the analyst does depends on the context in which it occurs. This is why the concept of technique, which describes unvarying procedure, is not useful. Common sense tells us not to expect vitality and creativity to be the result of the application of any particular technique. Neither does the answer lie in one's theoretical adherence or any particular or special knowledge of the patient. But there is something to be said for the way in which the analyst allows himself not to know about the patient. To be curious is to be convinced that one does not and cannot know all of what there is to be curious about. Of course, this does not mean that the analyst rejects the role of the expert. It isn't as if he doesn't respect his own ability to inquire, to learn, and to organize the material he learns. He must be able to give a concise summary of the major character problems. He must be able to describe the state of the transference and countertransference. And so on. What I mean to stress is the attitude the analyst takes toward what he learns. It is in this attitude that the analyst has his greatest opportunity to encourage the vitality of lengthy treatments. What he must do is preserve the uncertainty in what he learns. He knows, as Witenberg (1978) put its, that uncertainty is inevitable, that, as a matter of fact, the greater the amount of information, the greater