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In formulating this article, I wondered initially what advice I have to impart to experienced analysts. It is true that after thirty-eight years of practice I feel more comfortable in my work; I can conceptualize more easily; I feel more open to exploring what Winnicott referred to as the “psychoanalytic space.” Yet I am all too aware of often finding myself in a position of not knowing, a familiar state for an analyst, except that now I am much more in touch with possibilities, less insistent on knowing, more respectful of my patients' inherent capacities for finding their own way.
Perhaps I am more aware of the inevitable hubris that all analysts are prey to, that is, the tendency to assign too much power to the analytic process as the major factor of change in patients' lives. I am reminded of the concluding scene of Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard, when, as the protagonists leave the old family estate for the last time, a deafening noise concludes the action of the play, signaling that life has been going on outside and in the lives of the characters that neither the writer nor the audience can fathom.
As I pondered what to write, I thought the best way to approach this task would be to describe my own odyssey as an analyst. Of course, the tale begins with my family, an extended family centering on three sisters, my mother being the middle sister, and their six children, of whom I was the eldest, an in-between position endowing me with some of the prerogatives of the parent but always reminding me that I was still one of the kids. It was also a position that gave me some perspective, some vantage