Stanley Coen is one of a small but growing number of analysts who argue that the analyst's passionate feelings, his or her countertransference love and hate, are inevitable and ultimately necessary ingredients of the analytic mix between patient and analyst. This is a postmodern view of the emotional position of the analyst. As Leary has recently described, a postmodern social constructivist view of the analytic situation “asserts that human knowledge and reality are not given but are instead created by people through social processes and for social ends…. Under the terms of social constructivism, the analyst cannot stand outside the interaction with the patient. Patient and analyst continuously and mutually influence one another….”1

This same process, Coen asserts, can take place between an author and reader, the written text substituting for the analytic dialogue: “writing and reading become exciting, creative literary and psychoanalytic