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KINGS WHO WERE WONT TO KILL the bearers of ill tidings, knew something that psychoanalysts are just beginning to understand; namely, that the messenger is the message. To quote Crapanzano;
Where does the messenger stand? He himself is not without desire. He is not without power. He lives in a world charged with value, with loyalties and with animosities. … He has to understand the message, to interpret it, translate, contextualize, and elaborate it, and he has to justify all these procedures. He has responsibility! The messenger is not an automation—that fictitious role—in which he is socially cast per necessitatem(Crapanzano, 1992).
For all of Freud's devotion to the classic determinism of the Greek myths, his psychoanalysis was firmly imbedded in the rabbinic tradition; where infinity of meaning and plurality of interpretation are the cardinal virtues (Handleman, 1982, p. 21). Even now, all contemporary psychoanalytic interpretive systems offer so much latitude and choice (timing, focus, developmental level of interpretation, resistance, transference) that every interpretative offering of our messenger, the therapist, is inevitably a highly overdetermined participation which reveals as much about the therapist as it does about the patient. And, what is even more disconcerting, the patient usually knows it. It is this latter aspect of the issue—the patient's awareness of the therapist's participation—which presents us with the greatest theoretical and clinical discomfort.