Response

Dear Sir,

I am delighted to have the opportunity to reply to Stolorow's thoughtful and provocative letter. I will only be able to address a few of our differences given the limited space available.

First, I do not accept his statement that I equated corrective emotional experience with non-interpretive interactions ‘thereby perpetuating the dichotomy between insight through interpretation and relational experiences with the analyst’. Throughout my paper I went out of my way to avoid this kind of dichotomising, and made clear that what he incorrectly cites as my view is actually Renik's statement. (Wasserman, 1999, p. 450). In fact, I agree with Stolorow that all transference interpretations have both interpretive and relational dimensions. Given this agreement, on what do we disagree? Simply stated we differ on what part of the interpretive/ relational mix is usually primary in bringing about change. Stolorow emphasises the impact of being understood and ‘enabling thwarted developmental processes to become reinstated…’. In contrast, I believe that over the course of most analyses what is most essential in bringing about change is the content of interpretations that address intrapsychic conflict. The relational dimensions of the analyst's interventions are indispensable and facilitate the analytic process, but are less essential. I stress over the course of most analyses because at certain moments in all analyses the non-interpretive aspect of what the analyst does will have the most impact. For example, this was the case in my example when I said to Dr K: ‘You're right, I'm really being a noodge’ (p. 457).

Stolorow goes on to resurrect the outdated straw men of absolute analytic neutrality, abstinence, anonymity and objectivity, and then proceeds to attack them. I will focus first on ‘neutrality’. He states that what he calls the ‘dinosaur’ of neutrality ‘implies that analysts