You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Perhaps because Freud was compelled by circumstances to devote so much of his living energy to enhancing the growth, development and acceptance of psychoanalytic theory, his written remarks on methodology of therapy are little more than meager. Yet, Freud always demonstrated his awareness of the limitations of the classical method, particularly when he wrote on narcissism. In his Outline of Psychoanalysis () he spoke of the therapeutic necessity of the analyst playing several roles—”of the teacher, the guide, the exhorter, depending upon the degree of the patient's narcissism.”
Three analysts, Drs. Robertiello, Friedman and Pollens, in The Analyst's Role have collaborated in presenting case examples, depicting the ways in which they were able to master therapeutic hurdles and analytic impasses with patients who were previously inaccessible to more classically oriented approaches. It is of interest that over ninety per cent of the writers’ elected roles were of a benign, supportive or permissive nature. Obviously, they were roles that the writers felt would meet the therapeutic needs of their patients but which concomitantly met their own needs in the treatment situation. This reviewer found himself recalling several case situations where he had done precisely the opposite with cases similar to those the authors describe—and with similar success. For example, in the cases of depressed patients Robertiello and his colleagues reported that when they aligned themselves with the patients’ id