Nothing but the truth: self-disclosure, self-revelation, and the persona of the analyst

The question of the analyst's self-disclosure and self-revelation inhabits every moment of every psychoanalytic treatment. All self-disclosures and revelations, however, are not equivalent, and differentiating among them allows us to define a construct that can be called the analytic persona. Analysts already rely on an unarticulated concept of an analytic persona that guides them, for instance, as they decide what constitutes appropriate boundaries. Clinical examples illustrate how self-disclosures and revelations from within and without the analytic persona feel different, for both patient and analyst. The analyst plays a specific role for each patient and is both purposefully and unconsciously different in this context than in other settings. To a great degree, the self is a relational phenomenon. Our ethics call for us to tell nothing but the truth and simultaneously for us not to tell the whole truth. The unarticulated working concept of an analytic persona that many analysts have refers to the self we step out of at the close of each session and the self we step into as the patient enters the room. Attitudes toward self-disclosure and self-revelation can be considered reflections of how we conceptualize this persona.