Response to Commentaries on My Paper, “An Analyst's Uncertainty and Fear”

I appreciate my three colleagues' thoughtful consideration of “An Analyst's Uncertainty and Fear.” When I submitted the paper to The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, I wrote to the Editor, Jay Greenberg, that although it did not contain anything new in terms of theory or clinical practice, I thought it might be useful for our colleagues to read of a case that did not end as desired.

Mitchell Wilson recognized my intent; as he noted in his commentary, the clinical material in our literature almost always has a happy ending. I, too, have been impressed with how few psychoanalytic papers report on failures or partial failures of psychoanalysis. We all want happy endings. But even with experience, even with the belief that psychoanalysis is the treatment of choice, sometimes an analysis does not help … or does not help to the extent the analyst and patient wish. And sometimes, even if the analyst knew more, did things differently, were more aware of her vulnerability, or better analyzed, the analysis still may not provide all that is wanted.

I appreciate Wilson's wish to find therapeutic change, or more change than I did, in the text. I included in the paper the e-mails that Dr. S sent me after he left analysis because I think they reveal a growing