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Traditionally, the analyst's role has been to make himself a neutral “blank screen” to facilitate the reenactment of past relationships within the present therapeutic context. Current thinking in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy has placed increased emphasis on the importance of the interaction between patient and therapist in the curative process (Gill, 1982). With this new emphasis has come a rejection of the idea that the analyst is a blank screen and increasing acceptance that real characteristics of the therapist, such as personality, race, and gender, inevitably enter into the therapeutic interaction.
At the same time, female writers have begun to raise questions about possible gender bias in the field of psychoanalysis, including the possible role of the analyst's gender in the therapeutic process. These two currents — from the interactionalists and from the femininists — both advance the supposition that the therapist's gender may be an important, though hitherto unacknowledged, factor in the course of therapy as transferences surface and are worked through.
Until recently, very little has been written on this subject. Statistical studies on the effect of the therapist's gender on the