Anonymity, Desire, and Authenticity in the Analytic Relationship: Commentary on Kenneth A. Frank's Paper

Kenneth Frank addresses head-on the significance of something that is a moment-to-moment reality of our clinical lives—our unwitting self-revelation to our patients. He articulates the varieties and range of the analyst's advertent and inadvertent self-expression. Frank convincingly demonstrates how the joint exploration of the analyst's “personhood” or individuality can become a productive part—not just an unavoidable epiphenomenon—of the analytic endeavor.

Through his clinical illustration, Frank draws our attention to a particular type of self-revelation, in which the analyst impulsively reveals—or does not avoid exposing—an aspect of his or her personality that is potentially “undesirable.” The analyst may reveal unresolved feelings of frustration and competitiveness, as in the author's vignette, or some other personal quality or unresolved difficulty that stimulates aspects of the patient's negative transference (that is, the patient feels hurt, angered, or damaged by this aspect of the analyst). Such a revelation can be troublesome to the treatment process, especially if it is not properly and collaboratively explored. As analysts we are too often loathe to consider how our weaknesses, so tenacious that they may have weathered years of training analysis and supervision, are known to our patients and influence their work with us. We need to be more courageous in examining the particular analytic moment when analyst and patient together confront such things.