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We enjoy the ever-new fascination of traveling deep into inner space, both ours and the patients'.… One of my strongest and deepest reasons for wanting to be a therapist was that, ever since early childhood, I could think of nothing that gave me more intense enjoyment than listening to people telling me their stories.… We have the most interesting job in the world.
In naming some of the pleasures of analytic practice, is Coltart doing us a disservice? Are we better off concealing the gratifications our work provides, to protect ourselves from envy, jealousy, and public suspicion that we do not earn our fees?
In her paper, Karen Maroda argues for our honesty about what we derive from doing treatment. Like Coltart, Maroda believes in frank acknowledgment of the pleasures of an analytic life. Maroda (1991, 1998, 1999, 2002) has long been an ardent champion of the potential therapeutic usefulness of the analyst's deepest affective experiences. Once again, in this new contribution, we can recognize Maroda's unique voice, asking us to put aside fears of being misunderstood, or seen as narcissistically self-involved, and truthfully address our work's personal satisfactions.
Commenting on Gabbard's (2000) paper on the analyst's need for the patient's gratitude, Maroda suggests that we often settle for gratitude when our “deeper needs for self-healing and affirmation are not met” (p. 8). My comments address the nature of those deeper needs. What are the aspects of the human condition we most often bring to be healed by the treatments we conduct? Of course, any answer to this question is inherently subjective. In highlighting the roles of curiosity, hope, kindness, courage, the sense of purpose, a balance of emotions, the ability to bear loss, and integrity, I am naming what I ask of my own work. But