Discussion Of Jay Greenberg's Paper On Self-disclosure

IN MY EXPERIENCE, program committees tend to assemble groups of discussants who represent different viewpoints, expecting that the debate among them will prove educational for the audience. I believe that I was invited as a spokesman for the traditional, or classical position, at least in part because I have written one paper pertaining to the topic of the analyst's self-revelation as a technical issue, which I will discuss later. I hope that neither you, the audience, nor the inviting committee will be too disappointed to discover that, far from engaging Dr. Greenberg in debate, I shall try to sing in harmony with his thematic exposition.

There is no doubt in my mind that Freud's cautionary notes about the risks of self-revelation are, as Dr. Greenberg asserts, the advice "of a clinician who has tried something many times and who has lived to regret the consequences." They were set forth in papers intended for the instruction of the inexperienced practitioner, in the early morning, if not quite the dawn, of psychoanalytic history. I would add, as I do to students at my Institute, that Freud's well-known suggestion that the analyst be like a mirror to his patients was intended in the same spirit. It was his way of saying that it does not good for the analyst to try to help his patients change their neurotic difficulties by using himself as an example, that is, by describing his own troubles and his methods of overcoming them. Forget that time-honored device of the well-intended, Freud suggested, and concentrate instead solely on what the patient has to reveal of the nature of his problems (and he might have added, believe me, I have tried the other and it does not work).

I am totally in agreement with Dr. Greenberg's astute distinction between deliberate, consciously intended self-disclosure, and the inevitable self-revelations that are the consequence of our presentation of ourselves and our technical choices, which range from our choice of waiting room furnitu