To Speak or Not To Speak? How and When Is That the Question?: Commentary on Papers by Davies and Gabbard*

Erotic feelings transferential. countertransferential, or otherwise, can certainly be evocative. I found myself reacting quite strongly to the disagreement that Gabbard (1994) expressed with Davies's (1994a) use of self-disclosure of her erotic experience with her patient. Strongly, both because of my disagreement with Gabbard and because of my excitement over the invitation offered by these papers and the others in the symposium for those of us in the psychoanalytic community to converse about this topic. In the spirit of what I expect will be an ongoing conversation for some time to come, I share my perspective, as one voice and definitely not the final word.

Which brings me to my first point of disagreement with Gabbard's contribution, his tone. To say “we must draw the line at the brink of certain forms of self-disclosure” certainly sounds like a final word. It reminds me of Freud's injunction, pointed to by Tansey (1994), to “keep the countertransference in check” so that “we may not suddenly one day go further than we had intended” (Freud, 1915, p. 164). Gabbard's authoritative conclusion could be read as though we haven't come very far in 79 years, or that we have come full circle. But I think that Davies's brief review of the unfolding of psychoanalytic technique allows us to see how “a traditional understanding of analytic neutrality becomes untenable” (p. 156). She shows how we have come to recognize the inevitability of both analyst and analysand becoming enmeshed in the complicated reenactments that take place within the intersubjective field or space that an analytic pair unavoidably constitutes. Postpositive science perspectives such as this, which recognize