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BEFORE my candidacy at White I was in treatment with a traditionally trained, highly respected analyst. Looking back I would say that what helped me most was the profound resonance between the courage she openly advocated and the courage of her own actions (inside and outside the treatment). Her resonance made me feel more whole. What I was hearing from her words matched what I was feeling from her actions. She had an integrity that inspired me to strive for something similar.
Resonance transforms. In treatment, supervision, and writing we show people what we think matters, as we talk to them about what matters. If the medium doesn't match the message, if, for example, we preach nonintrusiveness intrusively, our message will transfix more than it will transform. Its recipient will be struck dumb, struggling to make coherent sense out of mystifying discrepancy. Like the parent who advises to “do as I say, not as I do,” the analyst, supervisor, writer who doesn't practice what she preaches is a stultifying, disorienting, and ineffective model.
On the other hand, we are often profoundly affected by encounters with integrity. In his book, Stanley Coen enacts the openness he recommends to his reader. As I read I felt he was treating me like a trusted colleague, revealing his clinical hopes, disappointments, and other countertransference