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Whenever one analyst tells his or her work to another, it is tempting to the told analyst to tell the telling analyst what the telling analyst might have seen, could have seen, should have seen, might have done, could have done, should have done. When the tale is as vivid and as gripping as Dr Spruiell's, the grand illusion of our being there, and the temptation to do the analyst's job, is still greater. At least, it is for me.
But there is and can be, in one analysis, but one analyst. I think De Tocqueville would have been pleased to discover that even in the United States, analysis is not done by committee. Each analyst is, for better and for worse, an original. I do not analyse the way Dr Spruiell does. Dr Spruiell does not analyse the way I do. We are all, whether of the same school or not, the same predilections or not, more different than alike. Yet whether of different predilections, different schools, and different nations or not, we are, in so far as we are all analysts, all countrymen.
Though it might be interesting to explore our considerable differences—and we shall no doubt do so this week—I believe that the delineation of difference may prove more fruitful if it follows, or at least accompanies, the delineation of likeness. Beginning with that assumption, I hope to consider some ways in which Dr Spruiell and the rest of us, despite our considerable differences, might conceivably be considered countrymen.
I have organized my remarks with regard to, and with respect for, his admirable departure from those conventions of reporting in which the analyst is portrayed as perfect observer and perfect analyser. I shall isolate a few fragments of the analysis, speculate about them, and then try to say what I think Dr Spruiell helps us most particularly to see of ourselves, of our ways of working, and of ways we might possibly work better.
For a point of departure, and a frame of reference, I want to underscore Dr Spruiell's comment on the aim of psychoanal