Editorial

In a recent cogent and sensitive editorial about the identity of the psychoanalyst, Marvin Drellich reminded us that we are particularly susceptible to re-repression as an occupational hazard. Not only are our unresolved fantasies of omnipotence reinforced by our patients' transferential idealization of us; but simply going through such a variety of experiences, conflicts and feeling levels with them confronts us perpetually with our own, not fully resolved, deeper conflicts and painful feelings.

We are engaged in lifelong self-analysis and the struggle to stay in contact with these unresolved conflictual feelings. One unfortunate consequence of this struggle is seen when we tend to minimize or omit our feelings as we communicate clinically. This is manifested in the oft-mentioned gap between what we teach and write and how we actually work with patients. The case histories we read and hear may be detailed to the finest points of the patients' life histories, psychodynamics and what they did and felt in the course of analysis, but with little or none of the analysts' emotional reactions to the patients or what they actually did or said. How do we understand what is happening in the course of a therapeutic encounter without the essential data of the specific role and emotional attitudes of one of the participants?

This tendency to be less candid about ourselves in the therapeutic interaction has interfered with the development of theories of psychoanalytic technique. Despite all the volumes that have been said and written about transference, we are only just beginning to deal with countertransference in more than generalized terms. Winnicott wrote about “hate in the counter-transference” 33 years ago and analysts still tend to be defensive, sheepish and apologetic about their negative feelings regarding patients. As honest as Freud was about many of his personal reactions to patients, he could admit very little about his difficulty in the presence of male analysands wh