Reply to Commentaries by Kindler and Shapiro

I thank Drs. Kindler and Shapiro for their thoughtful and intelligent discussions. Both clearly understand my main thesis: countertransference enactments are both inevitable and related to the unique person of the analyst. Since Shapiro's comments are more extensive and detailed, I limit my reply to her critique.

Gender-based rigidities in outlook and gender-related anxieties are the primary focal point of Shapiro's commentary. Her paper is a substantial contribution to the excellent burgeoning literature in this area, an area that women seem to grasp and articulate far better than men. I agree with most of her observations about my own insufficiently questioned gender assumptions, biases, blindness, and anxieties. I feel embarrassed by some of them for they seem so glaring to me after reading her comments. I agree fully that gender is a culturally constructed category and that staying “in gender” in an unchallenged way is the easiest path for most analysts. I also agree that women have traditionally submitted to starry-eyed, eroticized idealizations of their older male analysts and that male analysts have enjoyed this pleasure immensely, without sufficiently challenging this joint construction or repetition (see Hirsch, 1980-1981, 1992). Indeed, without openness to a wider breadth of gender possibilities, we stand to constrict severely the range of our patients' choices. Gender-based anxieties and assumptions are rampant among analysts, and Shapiro illustrates how they operate out of awareness in my own work, particularly with female patients. Her discussion and the literature she cites are eye-opening for all of us who are somewhat gender-embedded and who may not sufficiently challenge “normal” configurations, partly because of living “normal” lives ourselves. As Shapiro notes, most of my colleagues and I are more comfortable in countertransference positions that are “in gender.” Also, most heterosexual analysts are somewhat, to extremely, ill at ease w