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Owen Renik in his recent paper (1995) criticized analysts for holding onto a self-image of “interpretive infallibility” because they like to be idealized. But in my view, while infallibility is not achievable, it is still important for a therapist to believe in a particular orientation. You must believe in your model in the clinical situation. On the other hand you also must be able to question your model, because inevitably there's going to be data that doesn't neatly fit into your model. So that's a challenge, a challenge for all of us as we experience this meeting with its diverse views which may or may not resonate with our own clinical experience. We should all ask ourselves in what ways is our model correct and, importantly, in what ways might it be wrong? In terms of a scientific attitude we really have to believe we may be wrong. And we have to be able to hold both those attitudes in our minds, belief and disbelief, not exactly at the same time, but in terms of being honest and growing and learning in this field.
Having said that as the moderator, I can now comment as a panelist from my own biased point of view. When Owen Renik spoke about the issues of self-disclosure, Herb Wyman (personal communication) made a point that really emphasizes the traditional point of view, a point that really hasn't been stated clearly. For traditional analysts, the urge to self-disclose is regarded as manifest content of a counter-transference signal nature. That's the way we think about it; that's the way we work with it; but that doesn't mean we don't do it. We work with it, however, as, “I feel like doing something, that must mean that something's going on within me.”