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‘The analyst's personality: Winnicott analyzing Guntrip as a case in point’ should be read in conjunction with an earlier article (1997) in which Dr Crastnopol discloses to a patient, in response to a reported dream, an aspect of her own ‘secret life’: her son is handicapped. Such self disclosure (undifferentiated from self-revelation) with its myriad of possibilities and problems is a hotly debated topic in contemporary analytic circles (see Goodheart, Haule, ‘Journal Reviews’, JAP, 1999, 44, 3). To support her clinical practices, Dr Crastnopol leans heavily and, I think, unconvincingly on a relational orientation which she loosely defines as affirming of the therapeutic relationship's mutuality - ‘the ways in which the therapist and patient are reciprocally interdependent and influential’ with varying degrees of asymmetry and disclosure. Long-held perspectives on concepts such as countertransference, working alliance and belief in an integrated ‘true’ or ‘core’ self are being re-evaluated particularly by the relationists, who see both an intrapsychic and an interpersonal dialectic with a multiplicity of selves forming the analytic field (see Mitchell 1993 for a more thorough investigation than can be found in this article).
Authenticity, a term implied but not defined by Crastnopol, seems to be replacing neutrality and is fraught with technical problems such as which authentic voices are privileged in the analytic endeavour and ‘who’ of the many selves makes the decision. In a round-about way, Crastnopol comes close to this question by challenging Renik who offers circumscribed self-revelation when it pertains to the analyst's perception of the therapeutic process itself, not to the analyst's private life. Here, Crastnopol states that this precept does not go far enough, and she proceeds to justify disclosing information about her handicapped child. I can believe that the interaction felt meaningful and authentic, but which selves were brought forward? Was this mov