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.
Gurtman argues that the analyst who withholds information in the name of neutrality when serious illness threatens the treatment may be behaving inhumanely, out of his or her own countertransference and denial of illness. It may be helpful to validate the patient's perceptions; and, in the absence of opportunity to analyze transference fantasies, it may be sadistic not to disabuse the patient of them. Using her own analysis as an example, Gurtman contends that her analyst's informing her of his impending surgery provided her with an opportunity to cope with the various ramifications of serious illness in her family history. She also describes something of the impact of the disappointment in realizing her analyst's human limitations before she would otherwise have done so, and the subsequent difficulty in resuming her analytic work, especially at termination. Her disclosure to a patient of a friend's illness coincided with her own termination difficulties. She considers briefly her patient's caretaking response to her countertransferential needs, and her own similar reactions to her analyst on his return.