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It is a measure of how much change has taken place in traditional analysis and in the New York Institute that we are discussing the question of self-disclosure by the analyst as a legitimate and possibly useful technique in analytic work.
It was not many years ago that such a discussion would not have been possible. Until quite recently, classically trained analysts regarded self-disclosure as a breach of proper technique and, if regularly employed, either in clinical work or in one's writings, an indication of unanalyzed character pathology. I remember well with what grimaces and head shaking my first papers were greeted. Although in them I actually revealed no more than a few sparse facts about my life—that my father was an inveterate storyteller, or that, as a youngster, I was in the habit of having long talks at the kitchen table with my mother—I was viewed by many if not most of my colleagues as acting out unresolved exhibitionistic tendencies, and masochistic ones at that.
I have no doubt that such conflicts have contributed to what I have written. It would be naive, if not disingenuous, to believe otherwise. The subject matter that authors choose, or, more accurately, that chooses them, and the way in which they handle it, inevitably reflects fundamental aspects of themselves. Bert Lewin, who wrote extensively on dreams and primitive mental states, made that point when he compared himself to Franz Alexander. Alexander, who was