Psychoanalysis as Vocation and Martial Art

DEAR SIR,

In his paper 'Psychoanalysis as vocation and martial art' (Int. Rev. Psychoanal., 11:453–462, 1984) Parsons takes my book The Case for a Personal Psychotherapy (Oxford Univ. Press, 1981) as one of his two starting points. Following a courteous review of my ideas about technique, he writes (p. 453):

From time to time talking to people about what being in analysis is like, I have found some of them trying to describe what seems to be the same experience. The analyst behaves in a firmly classical way, not revealing himself personally, not sympathizing with difficulties, and might seem just the aloof and ungiving person Lomas criticizes. This is not leavened by anything which actively demonstrates warmth, caring and the rest. And yet, and this is the crucial point, these people have felt that here is someone who is deeply committed to their well-being and can be trusted as such, and someone who, apparently responsive or not, is really worthwhile trying to talk to about themselves. They may be baffled by their own feelings of appreciation. This is an experience of which Lomas seems to have no conception.

The existence of the phenomenon that Parsons well describes certainly presents a hazard to anyone attempting to criticize psychoanalytic technique. But to maintain that I am not aware of this is to seriously misrepresent me, as a careful reading of my book will show. However, I am not concerned here to justify myself against misconception (an undertaking that can easily becomes tedious to all parties) but to respond to Parsons' own ideas on a matter which we both clearly believe to be of central importance to the practice of psychoanalysis.

Parsons' thesis is that psychoanalysis 'is not only something the analyst does: it is also an expression of his being'.

This bare statement is a truism, for everything that we do is an expression of our being. So what does Parsons mean by it? If I have understood him correctly he believes that an experienced analyst r