A sense of frustration and deprivation in the analysand is frequently caused by the extraordinary privacy of the analytic situation, its ‘imbalance’ because the analysand divulges—to different degrees—her/his intrasubjective experiences, the subjectively known ‘history’ and perceived outer reality, while the analyst keeps silent about his own experiences and reactions. Complaints about how this reality of the analytic situation is considered are familiar, as is the frequently extreme curiosity of the analysand. Struggles about these issues, their meaning and significance are known only to the two participants. They are also the ones who know what took place, even though the intra- and intersubjective reality of each usually differs.

The editors of The Inward Eye, both analysts, acknowledge in the Introduction (p. xiii) that