The Analyst's Self-Discovery

Aburgeoning contemporary literature on self-analysis testifies to the crucial place in analytic technique occupied by the analyst's self-observations and his or her reflections upon them (e.g., Jacobs, 1991, McLaughlin, 1981; Poland, 1986). The prevalent view is increasingly of clinical psychoanalysis as a learning experience for the analyst, as well as the analysand. My own impression is that the mechanism of action of clinical psychoanalysis requires the analyst to engage in significant self-discovery in the course of conducting an analytic treatment if that treatment is to be successful, and my purpose in these remarks will be to explain and illustrate this view of the analytic process.

We regularly observe that progressive analytic work unfolds via mutual active embroilment between analyst and analysand and through continuous effort on the part of both to become aware of and clarify the nature of the embroilment. Gradually, we have come to consider that the bilaterality of the personal entanglement that characterizes the analytic treatment relationship is not a regrettable consequence of the analyst's fallibility but, rather, a sine qua non, of the psychoanalytic process. Boesky (1990), for example, concludes, “If the analyst does not get emotionally involved sooner or later in a manner that he had not intended, the analysis will not proceed to a successful termination” (p. 573). Bird (1972), similarly, suggests that, when clinical analysis works, “the analyst becomes protagonist and