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Ralf Zwiebel has devoted himself for many years to the analyst's emotional reactions to the analysand, to the analyst's relationship with the analysand, and to the analytic situation. He has published many contributions on countertransference dreams, on the fatigue reaction of the analyst — in his book Der Schlaf des Analytikers [The Sleep of the Analyst] (Zwiebel, 1992) — and on projective identification. In the book under review, he ventures into a field that has hitherto received little or no attention in the public discourse of psychoanalysis and its practice — namely, the analyst's anxiety and, an even greater obstacle to analytic work, his2 defence against it. Anxiety is an unavoidable concomitant of analytic work, which it can restrict or even prevent altogether. The combination of defence and avoidance of anxiety becomes what the author calls the ‘phobic position’. This too is unavoidable; it ought to be resolved but, if it cannot be, the consequences are likely to be negative and indeed catastrophic. Although anxiety is mentioned again and again in this book in conjunction with the analyst's shame and sense of guilt, the author confines himself to a comprehensive discussion of the complex problem of anxiety. If an analyst is assailed by recurrent anxiety, he will also repeatedly lose the security of his analytic identity, which he will be bound to call into question. In the author's view, there is no such thing as an “unshakeable analytic self [or] clearly defined psychoanalytic identity” (p. 12); psychoanalytic competence is at all times fluid and vulnerable, and calls for constant rebalancing and regulation. Aporia and hopelessness will always be potentially contained in analytic work.
Professor Zwiebel avoids a polarization of more orthodox interpretive technique and the corresponding analytic attitude, on the one hand, and an intersubjective, interactive understanding of the analytic relationship, on the other. He takes a critical view of one-sided appro