‘The Analyst at Work’

Dear Sirs,

I accepted with appreciation the invitation to be the first participant in the new section of the Journal, ‘The Analyst at Work’, as soon as I understood what the underlying idea was: ‘to examine ordinary sessions with all the doubts, frayed edges and uncertainties that characterise our everyday practice’ (Gabbard & Williams, 2002, p. 2). I readily identified with the need to present material as unmanicured as possible, to be scrutinised by respected colleagues from different psychoanalytic ‘cultures’. This exercise entails some degree of narcissistic mortification—especially when describing difficult situations with parametric cases—but analysts seem champions at sublimating masochism, and the benefits of detailing sessions in this fashion seem obvious for our discipline: the promotion of non-idealised clinical communication and the countering of what Esman (1979) called our ‘Babel of tongues’.

I felt very grateful to Drs Britton and Michels for their commentaries on my presentation. I learned from both of them. I appreciated Dr Britton's understanding of my struggle to avoid ‘an abortive analysis’ on one hand and ‘an interminable analysis’ on the other (p. 189). Also, I welcomed Dr Michels's close, supervisory-like discussion of the clinical exchange. I was glad that he found my ‘openness … courageous and refreshing’ (p. 195). I thank him for graciously offering excellent alternative interpretations to my interventions, no doubt realising that interpretations analogous to the proposed ones could have been issued before or after session 1293.

As an epilogue, I shall add that last Christmas I heard from the patient, Dr B. He sent me some fine bottles of wine, and I called to thank him and find out how he was doing. He let me know that the first few weeks after termination were ‘a bit rough’, but he felt well adjusted thenceforward, dealing reasonably well with daily problems. Also, he openly expressed gratitude for the treatment.