The Patient's Perception of the Analyst's Self-Disclosure: Commentary on Amy Lichtblau Morrison's Paper

It is indeed a privilege to discuss Amy Morrison's paper. Her husband, Andy, has been a friend and colleague of mine from the time when he was an admired resident at the “Psycho” (Massachusetts Mental Health Center) in Boston and I was a medical student, just beginning to explore the wonders of the human mind. Andy introduced me to Amy at one of the psychoanalytic meetings in New York, but I never got to know her. Reading her paper, I regret that, because what emerges from the pages is a strong and passionately determined individual, with a capacity for honest introspection that served her and her patients well. She comes across as a therapist who was exacting yet compassionate toward herself; a woman committed to understanding herself and the motives behind her feelings and actions. I believe that in her attempts to understand the complex determinants of her therapeutic actions, Amy Morrison has enriched our field enormously.

Rather than discuss the woman who appears between the pages of the paper, however, I would like to focus on the paper itself and what I found most impressive and valuable, in it—the self-discipline that Morrison both demonstrated and held up as a therapeutic ideal.

The self-discipline and introspection Morrison utilized as she struggled with what to tell her patients about her illness is a key element in