Introduction to “The Older Analyst at Work: The Old Man and the Sea?”

This Analyst at Work section examines the work of an older psychoanalyst as he ages yet continues to work as a psychoanalyst. Eike Hinze describes his work with a disturbed young man. Decisions about starting an analysis and the struggles involved in ‘reaching’ this patient form part of the question of whether this is a ‘quest’, or another analysis, near the end of an analytic career.

Of particular note is Dr. Hinze’s explicit use of his own ‘reverie’/ countertransference/ unconscious states to form interventions. The two discussants express their own understanding of how they might approach the problems posed. They both speak to the forms of intervening that differ from their own, and their clinical understanding of revealing one's own associations in the clinical hour. They also speak to how the process of aging might have influenced the clinical work itself.

The possible shift in technique over the course of Dr. Hinze's clinical career is more difficult to assess: does it come from age, maturity, shifts in theory and technique, or an intense desire to make emotional contact within this particular patient and clinical setting? These are the “question marks” conveyed in their discussions, like the one in the title itself.