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Chair: Nahir Bonifacino
Presenters: John Churcher, Allannah Furlong, Claudia Frank
The panel consisted of three presentations on confidentiality, relevant to psychoanalytical practice. After each presentation there were five minutes of questions and answers, adding up to a total of 30 minutes for each talk.
From the start, the audience was asked to respect the confidentiality regarding the clinical material.
Claudia Frank began the series of presentations with the illustration of a clinical situation. The clinical vignette was of one of her patients. Returning to therapy after a week-long holiday, the patient claimed she had rediscovered a dream that was featured in the recently published work of her own analyst. The analyst said she was shocked, wondering why she had not thought of the consequences before publishing (although, of course, she had considered it, deciding not to ask the patient about using the dream material in her book out of fear of seducing her). Frank confessed she had hoped that, in the very unlikely situation in which the patient accessed the book (a limited edition, for a very specific and professional setting, accessible to wide audiences for just 24 hours), she would not recognize the material, which was partially camouflaged. In her previous preoccupation with providing confidentiality in as adequate and professional a way as possible, the analyst had asked two analytic colleagues to read the text and make sure, in case the patient ever read it, there was nothing that could harm her.
During the session, after a moment of silence, the patient – in full-Oedipal conflict – began by saying, “It was a difficult weekend for me”; she displayed ambivalence between the joy of reunion and vexation at discovering that her own dream had been published in her analyst's new book, an ambivalence that dominated the session. The patient insisted on the confidentiality and trust she had placed in the sessions of the week. At this time, the patient slept better, an