Suitability for Analysis and Therapeutic Zeal

In psychoanalytic literature, as Tyson & Sandler (1971) have observed, the criteria which form the basis for selection of adult patients who wish to be taken on for analysis are many and varied: moreover, diverse terms are employed to describe the different aspects of the selection process. There are, however, relatively few publications which deal with the possible affinity between suitability for analysis and therapeutic zeal. My aim in this paper is, therefore, to take this relationship into consideration from several points of view, such as I have been able to observe it during the course of my experience both in selecting patients suitable for treatment and assessing candidates for training, which was also part of my experience as a trainer analyst. In fact, the patients who underwent a routine assessment of suitability for analysis were, in some cases, the same as those the candidates proposed for supervision; thus I found myself hearing and reconsidering these patients' problems first indirectly, i.e. through supervision and then again directly—because some patients came back to me, being dissatisfied with the analyst to whom they had been referred.

Limentani's (1972) recent article further encouraged me to write, insomuch as he deals with problems of suitability for analysis both in analysts in training and in patients in general. Limentani's idea was not to provide a guide to the selection and assessment of suitability for analysis: he observes, for example, that the young colleague often asks a more experienced analyst to select his patients for him, and that this passive acceptance, besides being a source of misunderstanding, is usually not very highly valued.

In my opinion, assessment of suitability for analysis should also be considered in relation to therapeutic zeal—this should be done in order to obtain a better understanding of those paradoxical emotional situations which can be created during self-analysis or in the course of supervision, and w