Response to Commentary by Gerald Schamess

Editor's Note: The following is a response written by Rhona Engels to Gerald Schamess' commentary on her Clinical Reflections case. Both the Engels' case and the Schamess commentary were originally published in PSW 8:2.

I am grateful for the opportunity to reply to Gerald Schamess's eloquent commentary on my article. I appreciate his making me aware that I was automatically equating “real self being” with self-disclosure. I now would prefer the term “professional vulnerability” suggested to me by a colleague—a term which does not necessarily include personal self-disclosure. It is an attitude of spontaneity in the moment, emotional risk-taking, honesty, and wholeheartedness. Horney writes that “in Zen Buddhist writings sincerity is equated with wholeheartedness” because “nobody divided within himself can be wholly sincere. Sincerity, not deceiving, means putting forth one's whole being … in which nothing is kept in reserve, nothing expressed under disguise …” (Horney, 1945). This wholehearted sincerity infuses Schamess's entire commentary and, most specifically, the statement he says he would now offer his patients: “I think I will only be able to work with you … if you can tolerate some of what I'm experiencing … Both of us must somehow come to grips with my all too evident limitations” (Schamess, 2001). It's hard to imagine any patient not being genuinely moved and honored by this statement. Of course, his statement also makes it more difficult to maintain the illusion that “in the transference the therapist is exactly the person they want/need for him/her to be, at least temporarily” (Schamess, 2001). I happen to agree that