Presenting a Case: Some Observations on the Experience and its Impact on the Analytic Dyad

Until quite recently, in both the practice and the literature of psychoanalysis, it has been unusual, even exceptional, for analysts to talk or write about the more personal aspects of their experience in the analytic situation. The reasons for this are myriad, in large part, perhaps a reflection and extension of the private self the analyst presents to the patient as a neutral figure in relation to whom both transference and resistance will emerge. It is an axiom of classical treatment, at the heart of an unfolding psychoanalytic process as Freud and others since have formulated and elaborated.

At the same time, our efforts to understand our patients require us to understand ourselves. Although analysts may differ considerably about theoretical aspects of the treatment process, our work is “based on the assumption that a relationship, or to say the least, an interaction develops between two people in the analytic process” (Sandler, 1976, p. 44). We cannot address the fundamental components of treatment—transference and resistance—without recognizing that empathy, identification, and for better or worse, countertransference will also ensue. Inevitably, of course, we do reveal aspects of ourselves, just as we have found ways to explore and discuss countertransference within the limits of a tradition that, for the most part, has eschewed self-disclosure.