You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This paper is a slightly modified version of a paper which Paula Heimann read to the Canadian Psycho-Analytic Society in December 1975 in Montreal. It was published in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 25(2) (1977).
In recent times interest in the clinical situation has increasingly focused on the analyst, on what goes on in him and how he proceeds. Discussions of this kind have hitherto been largely confined to private study groups, seminars, and, of course, to supervision of students and young analysts.
Most of us learn probably more, and certainly more vividly, from exploring psychoanalytic technique than from erudite metapsychological expositions. Of course, both methods of guiding and checking our work are complementary to one another.
By establishing clarity about our own cognitive process we improve, above all, our own work. It is, in fact, part of our self-analysis. We also promote understanding between colleagues and also with workers in allied fields and with the interested public. In this way, I feel, we shall dispel misconceptions, illusions, and mysticism (the invidious return of religion) with regard to what we claim to be a scientific undertaking. That psychoanalysis is not only a science but also an art does not contradict the need for rigorous disciplined thinking. To move the “self-presentation” of the analyst at work from private to public exposition and debate means to show the strength and viability of psychoanalysis.
I wish to mention briefly the operational concepts presented by Fliess (1942) and Greenson (1960) in their detailed investigation of the analyst’s actual work with his patients.
Fliess offers the notion that the analyst develops a “work ego”, thanks to which he becomes “a very exceptional person during his work with the patient”, capable of
enduring the manifold severe demands and deprivations which his function as analyst entails. For my purpose two facts are particularly relevant, as wi