What I Would Not Part With1

I could give all to Time except — except

What I myself have held. But why declare

The things forbidden that while the Customs slept

I have crossed to safety with? For I am There,

And what I would not part with I have kept.

Paradoxically, in the analytic setting, the analyst attempts not to be judgmental; and yet, he must bring to the situation values that provide the underpinning of analytic work, values that he “would not part with.” When I speak of analytic values, what I have in mind is not a psychoanalytic morality nor a code of ethical conduct; neither am I referring to a set of concepts that I believe to be essential to psychoanalysis (for example, the notion of the dynamic unconscious, transference, and defense). Rather, in speaking of psychoanalytic values, I am referring to those ways of being and ways of seeing that characterize the distinctive manner in which each of us practices psychoanalysis. In this chapter I will attempt to convey to the reader the values that lie at the core of the way I practice psychoanalysis, and of who I am as a psychoanalyst.

Each element of an analytic value system is inseparable from all of the others, and yet, to my mind, there is a hierarchy of importance among the elements of that system. For me, what is most fundamental to psychoanalysis is the principle that an analyst treats his patient — and all those his patient's life impinges upon — in a humane way, in a way that at all times honors human dignity. This principle is the North Star of psychoanalysis; it is a point of reference in terms of which all else is located. When an analyst is not being humane, what he is doing with the patient is not recognizable to me as psychoanalysis.