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The discussion of a particular point of analytic work can make one think that this is the only essential point for the author. One of the difficulties of scientific communication is that one can be led to the idea that the author is blind to other aspects of the problem.
If I have addressed myself to what the patient does to the real image of the analyst in the treatment, this is certainly not to say that the real aim of the analysis is to discover the reality of the analyst (Berry-Bertrand, 1974), especially if by reality one means the 'objective' reality, which seems to be a point which Luzes has understood in his discussion of my paper (Luzes, 1974). However, he does not seem to distinguish clearly, in his discussion of my work, 'objective' reality from psychic reality.
I want to make two points. (1) Analysis does not have an aim. If it had one, it could only be the discovery by the patient of the truth about himself, by means of the analytic situation, as Laplanche pointed out at the discussion of my paper. (2) The patient's curiosity in regard to the real life of the analyst (his habits, his tastes) is most frequently linked with his attitude in regard to the primal scene, to his wish for knowledge and the defence which is associated with it. This curiosity can also represent an attempt at de-idealization.
What seems to me effective in the analysis is not the unveiling of reality, but much more the confrontation between fantasy and reality—a confrontation which is implicitly and constantly acknowledged by the patient, if he is not deluded.
The clinical examples which I have given were essentially aimed to show how, in the analytic process, the image which the patient has of the analyst is altered, allowing the overcoming of the splitting and the surfacing of the ambivalence (and thus of psychic reality). This allows a liberation from the idealization of the analyst, seen as a good idealized parent, omniscient and all-powerful.
If I have mentioned, for the rec