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My First Reaction to the question, ‘What do you actually do?’ varies according to the person who asks the question. If he is a non-analysed layman I usually feel embarrassed because I know that whatever I am going to say cannot do justice to the intricacies of the analyst's job, nor will it satisfy the questioner who even after a lengthy conversation is likely to remain puzzled. He may even become a little indignant because his intellect alone cannot grasp my reply.
If on the other hand the question is put to me by a colleague, my answer is likely to depend on the emotional climate between us. But however favourable that may be, a defensive factor will colour it; not because I have done something dreadfully unethical, nor because I fear that my reply will reveal that I am ‘not an analyst’, but because a little voice (I am deliberately not using a technical term) tells me that I do not know, or at least do not know very well, what I actually do. Therefore, before I have time to formulate my reply, my affective reaction to the colleague's question could be: ‘Why do you want to know? Take your scopophilic instincts elsewhere!’—or words to that effect.
The circumstances which make a colleague ask this question are, of course, that I have given him good reason to believe that I have deviated from some standard, e.g. ‘classical analytical technique’. In addition to frequency of sessions (five per week) and use of the couch, the outstanding characteristics of C.A.T. are (Rycroft, 1968) that the analyst:
Eschews all giving of advice, prescribing of drugs and management of his patients' lives;
Confines his utterances to interpretations;
Instructs his patients to obey the fundamental rule of free association.