Jerome Winer, M.D.

In my opinion the most difficult aspect of teaching the clinical skills of psychoanalysis to candidates lies hidden in their making certain correct interpretations that are best left unverbalized. By correct interpretations, I mean ones that are plausible, well located in a background of evidence that has emanated from the patient, are mindful of the transference, and tactful. Yet, the interpretations I am discussing are subtly motivated by a particular type of countertransference and have as their primary aim relieving preconscious anxiety in the analyst.

All psychoanalytic candidates I have supervised, whether advanced or early in their training, have shown the problem at one time or another. At certain moments in a session or for a period of sessions, they cannot refrain from verbalizing what they believe the analysand is currently experiencing or has experienced in the past. In other words, they are compelled to tell the analysand their opinion of what is going on in the analysand's mind, frequently couched in genetic terms, and often including something about the analysts themselves. They no longer believe continued listening is what is most appropriate. There is a driven quality to their interventions. Inevitably in these cases, the patient has reacted to something real about the analyst which revivifies an old, painful transference pattern in the patient, but the analyst does not want to know of his or her role as the here-and-now trigger to a transference-countertransference enactment. If the interpretation does include a here-and-now element about the transference, it is not the one that is directly involved. A conflict of the analyst's own is now supervening, and verbalization is serving as an intellectualized defense. The analyst's interpretation, even when quite correct, states “Let's get it straight, you are the patient here. I don't want to listen to this. You listen to me.” The analyst wants the healing effect of being listened to rather than the other