The mandate to understand the sufferer's problems from the practitioner's insight into his or her own is a basic tenet of the healing tradition. From earliest times practitioners have created healing systems for those they have treated out of the meanings they have made of their own suffering and life crises.

Regarding self-examination to be indispensable to the most profound understanding of any problem, Freud (1937) held that to the extent that self-examination is ignored, clinical competence will be compromised. In this regard, the practitioner's self-analysis serves as more than just a caution against the analyst's untoward reception and misunderstanding of what the patient is reporting. No less vital is the analyst's recognition, derived from introspection, that the patient's presentation alone is insufficient for a crucial comprehension of what is intended to be communicated. Rumination from the analyst's psyche augments the