The Occasional Question in Psychoanalytic Assessments

Dear Dr Hayley:

It is an irony that a good paper published with insufficient bibliographic background research may exemplify the proposition that discovery is rediscovery and finding is refinding. The proposition has been a psychoanalytic truism since Freud, but known also to the ancients, notably Plato, long before. Freud's bibliographic research for his dream book has been an exemplar and intimidator for generations of students.

This is exemplified in a limited way by Dr Fred Busch's otherwise carefully documented presentation on 'The occasional question in psychoanalytic assessments' (Int. Rev. Psychoanal., 13: 453–461). I confess special pleading, for the omissions I must point out are of my two papers on questioning ('Some considerations of the use of questioning in psychoanalytic technique', J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 1954, 2: 57–66, and 'Questioning and pain, truth and negation', J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 1957, 5: 302–324). The first of these papers dealt with questioning as a parameter of basic technique (cf. Eissler, K., 'The effect of the structure of the ego on psychoanalytic technique', J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 1953, 1: 104–143), and as having a potential effect on the transference that must be kept minimal and analysable, so that the effect can be reduced to zero. The second essay traced the etymological history of the word, question, from Rome to the Inquisition, adducing the large measure of aggressive, sado-masochistic impulse that enters into the psychology of the question. It approached, but did not directly deal with the issue of the psychoanalyst-questioner's tempering this regressive, dominative use of the device with his uniquely nurturant, caring, healing intentions. Drawing on a suggestion of Eissler's, I discussed the question as negation—e.g. the patient who asks questions in order to evade self-revelatory statements; the analyst who may excessively question as an expression of counter-resistance and countertransference; the