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As an analyst with a chronic physical condition, I welcome this long-overdue volume of essays on illness in the analyst. Just as important, however, is the discussion of some of the issues of psychoanalytic technique that consideration of the ill analyst raises. Most of the papers attempt to understand the effects of the analyst's physical anomaly on both the analyst and his or her patients. Even more rare in our literature is the exploration of how these specific, and often obvious, disturbances in the analyst might affect analytic technique. There are a number of discussions of the specific and abundant cases, focusing on concepts like abstinence, anonymity, and the effects of “truth telling” by the analyst on the treatment. The degree of adherence to analytic orthodoxy may be said to divide the contributors as much as their positions on any of the specific issues addressed.
In reading these chapters, several dichotomies began to appear in the various authors' manifest and latent messages. In the chapters by Sander Abend and by Richard Lasky, for example, the authors are very emphatic that the analytically correct (i.e., orthodox) technique—and primarily the importance of maintaining anonymity and abstinence—is necessary to maintain an intact analytic