The Politics Of Self-Disclosure

In a letter to Sandor Ferenczi, commenting on one of his recent contributions, Freud makes the startling admission that

my recommendations on technique were essentially negative. I thought it most important to stress what one should not do, to point out the temptations which run counter to analysis. Almost everything one should do in a positive sense I left to tact. What I achieved thereby was that the obedient submitted to those admonitions as if they were taboos and did not notice their elasticity. This would have to be revised someday but without setting aside the obligations. (Grubrich-Simitis, 1986, p. 270)

We have reached a moment by now in the analytic discourse where the “disobedients” have gathered great forces and staked out a field in which the recommendations have been amply revised, leaving the question open, of course, whether by so doing, the analytic obligations have not been entirely cast aside. At the forefront of the current debate about Freud's original recommendations stands the classical position on analytic abstinence and neutrality which has been gradually dismantled as a virtually impossible stance to uphold. From Gill's (1979) notion that transference is not just a distortion of the patient but also a response to the analyst's actual behavior, to Aron's (1991) argument that self-revelation is not a choice but an inevitability, the idea that the analyst's personality and behavior constitutes a crucial component of the analytic relationship has become by now a foregone conclusion. Analysts are no longer discouraged from revealing their personal reactions but instead are encouraged to make use of them within the analytic context. Hence the debate has shifted from strict sanctions against any disclosure of personal/private thoughts and emotions to a discussion of what impressions,