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One of the issues that is a constant accompaniment to my clinical experience concerns the use I am to make of aspects of my own life, my past, my character traits, and the like as they become activated at different times with different patients. It concerns much more than countertransference “disclosure,” a legalistic term I have become increasingly unhappy with. These are more complex questions like: Why is this piece of my life emerging into my experience or, perhaps, the patient's experience at this time? Is the presence of this experience of mine likely to advance the analytic process at this point, or will it take us on a detour? How long do I follow it before deciding? Is it useful to make some or all of what I am experiencing explicit to the patient?
What follows are two clinical vignettes, one involving an initial consultation, the other an event well into an analysis, perhaps heralding the commencement of a move toward termination. I would like to to consider them here together, as greatly pared down snapshots, because they both involved the same feature of my own history. In the first, I decided not to speak of my personal associations with the patient; in the second I decided that I would.
George, a 35-year-old architect who is seeing several different analysts for consultations, enters the office for the first appointment with a jaunty air and a twinkle in his eye. Without requiring an invitation, he launches into a brisk, well-organized, and entertaining narrative of his life.
George is seeking treatment because he feels the approach of middle age and has a sense that there is considerable unfinished business left over from his childhood. He has problems both with inhibitions in his