Historicity, Humility, and the Analytic Exercise Reply to Commentaries by Drs. Palombo and Horner

I appreciate the opportunity to reply to the commentaries on my paper by Drs. Palombo and Horner. I do not think, however, that they grasped the central points I explored, and I find it difficult to know quite how to respond. For the sake of brevity and dialogue, I will focus my reply on what seem to be the key issues and questions they raised, as well as on several of the differences between our perspectives.

According to Dr. Palombo, the primary message of my paper is “to ameliorate the burden on the patient caused by an idealized transference to the analyst,” an obstacle in analytic work that he suggests is reinforced by “the analyst's personal feelings of grandiosity.” In emphasizing the historical nature of unconscious experience, my intention was not so much to comment on an analyst's ability to respond optimally to the patient's idealization, although I can see how this might be one technical application of the concepts I was exploring. The general thrust of my article, as I conceived it, was that unconscious influence is not something that can be fully accounted for by the intrapsychic and interpersonal variables of a particular individual or situation (such as those pertaining to the patient, the analyst, or their relationship). In a subtle yet pervasive and irrepressible manner, unconsciousness reflects—as I put it in the article—“a complex, historically woven tapestry of moral and ethical values, beliefs, and assumptions that shape and give accent to the unfolding of human history in a broad sense and the individual lives we lead more particularly.”

Why is it important to recognize history as a basic feature of unconsciousness? In my view, it is one corrective for the unfortunate tendency of some analysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists to assume that what happens in the consulting room between patient and analyst holds greater experiential significance than do the various other interpersonal experiences in the patient's life. Dr. Palombo appears initia