Facilitating Analysis With Implicit and Explicit Self-Disclosures

I propose to get beyond the false stereotypes that have divided contemporary Freudian and relational psychoanalysts with regard to self-disclosure. Understanding self-disclosures made by analysts of all persuasions in the course of their everyday work requires a relational and intersubjective perspective, but not a paradigm shift. Disclosures of everyday analytic work are based on a two-person relationship in which two subjectivities are devoted to the “one-person psychology” of the patient. Three extensive clinical illustrations compare and contrast inevitable self-disclosures that are part and parcel of psychoanalytic treatment with those that are more explicit, conscious, and deliberate and serve a specific aim of treatment. Disclosures and interactions, as understood within this framework, are intended to demonstrate mutuality but not necessarily symmetry and equality of authority in the analytic relationship. The analyst's self-disclosures, although undoubtedly informed by countertransferences and other very personal reactions, are meant to facilitate and deepen a process in which the patient's psychic life is at the center.