GERSON 1996 Neutrality Resistance and Self-Disclosure in An Intersubjective Psychoanalysis

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Referências
Gerson, S. (1996). Neutrality, Resistance, and SelfDisclosure in an Intersubjective Psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 6(5), 623645.
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Neutrality, Resistance, and SelfDisclosure in an Intersubjective Psychoanalysis
Samuel Gerson, PHD, author; 5625 College Avenue Oakland, CA 94618
The development of the clinical theory and technique of intersubjective psychoanalysis requires
reconceptualization of the core concepts of neutrality, resistance, and selfdisclosure. Current
and historical usages of the concept of neutrality are examined in an attempt to deconstruct the
role of neutrality within a hierarchical and gendered system. Neutrality is then reconceptualized
as a relational event within the analysis that stands apart from transferencecountertransference
enmeshments. Neutrality is understood as a mutual achievement that cannot be claimed in an a
priori manner by the analyst. Resistance is similarly reconceptualized as an aspect of a
relational unconsciousdesigned to maintain transferencecountertransference configurations.
This phenomenon is termed intersubjective resistanceand, as a jointly held state, is most apt to
reveal itself when the analyst breaches normative conduct. It is at these junctures that the
analyst's selfdisclosure and mutual exploration of the enactment become a powerful method for
furthering the analytic process. An extended case vignette illustrates the use of selfdisclosure
for the purpose of understanding an enactment and unraveling an intersubjective resistance.
A century after its birth, psychoanalysis is no longer securely moored in the structure of beliefs
in historic and objective truths that characterized its origins. Contemporary psychoanalytic
theory and technique is now situated within a world of relationally constructed subjectivity and is
challenged to develop models that both elaborate and contain this new context. Variously
referred to as social constructivism (Hoffman, 1983, 1991, 1992a), twoperson psychology
(Ghent, 1989; Aron, 1990; Spezzano, 1995, this issue), and intersubjectivity (Benjamin, 1988,
1990; Ogden, 1994; Stolorow, 1995), these contemporary perspectives have in common the
view that clinical psychoanalysis is characterized by the continuously evolving and mutually
reciprocal influences of patient and analyst upon one another (Mitchell, 1988, 1993; Aron,
1991).
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Through its emphasis on the interpersonally constructed nature of psychoanalytic discourse,
contemporary psychoanalysis is defined by its reexamination of fundamental and, for many,
sacrosanct views about the nature of the analyst's participation in creating and furthering a
beneficial analytic process. The activity of the analyst has been elevated to a position of
illuminating the field and, much like a prism that gathers and disperses the psychoanalytic
discourse, the analyst's subjectivity has become a focal point in our attempts to coordinate
theory and technique. The manner by which the analyst allows the requirements for objectivity
to converge with the claims of his or her subjectivity is the ground upon which principles of
psychoanalytic technique have always evolved. It is to be expected, then, that just as Freud's
initial recommendations about technique focused on how the analyst should manage his or her
subjective response to the patient, so do contemporary formulations about technique revisit and
redescribe the same terrain.
To date, most explications of twoperson perspectives on psychoanalysis have involved
delineating differences between these and the classical model. Quite naturally, attention has
been focused on highlighting those concepts within the classical paradigm that run counter to
contemporary developments in psychology and philosophy. Relatively less well articulated,
however, is the relation between clinical theory and clinical practice within an intersubjective
psychoanalysis.
In this paper I address this issue by offering elements of a theory of technique for an
intersubjective psychoanalysis. At the core of this project is a redefinition of the concepts of
neutrality, resistance, and selfdisclosure based on the relationally constructed aspects of each
concept. By situating each concept firmly within a twoperson psychology, the redescriptions are
intended to salvage and rehabilitate for contemporary use both the core concepts of neutrality
and resistance and the disowned and disparaged act of selfdisclosure.
Having welcomed the analyst's subjectivity back from its internal exile and having offered it a
prominent seat in the analytic forum, we are now confronted by questions about the form and
extent of expression we shall allow it. We have come to know this as “the problem of self
disclosure” (Aron, 1991; Burke and Tansey, 1991; Renik, 1995) and have tended to begin our
considerations with a notion of selfdisclosure as the impulsive and selfindulgent figure that
escapes from the more mature ground of professional neutrality. In framing it along these lines,
however, we continue to set the parameters of the dilemma in terms defined by the classical
objectivist perspective rather than by fully considering it within the framework of a relational
constructivist psychology (Greenberg, 1986). To do so requires that we engage in the crucial
task of redefining our technical terms in a manner consistent with the premises of an
intersubjective psychoanalysis, and then examine if and how this new perspective can guide
and facilitate our clinical work.
An extended case vignette is provided to illustrate how the analyst's selfdisclosure can be a
beneficial force in creating the transition from mutual resistance to mutual neutrality.
Neutrality
Neutrality has always been a concept saturated with boundary functions and meanings. The
concept of neutrality has served as the boundary between a positivist epistemology and the
inherently ambiguous nature of interpersonal communication; a boundary between
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dispassionate reflection and the impulse toward action; a boundary between discovery and
suggestion; a boundary between reasoned interpretation and judgmental attitude; a boundary
between transference and countertransference; a boundary between the past and the present;
a boundary separating the analyst from the patient; and, finally, a boundary separating the
analyst's knowledge from his or her own internal sources of validity and vitality.
First introduced by Freud (1915) as a pragmatic posture tied specifically to how the male
analyst should respond to claims of and demands for love from his female patients, the concept
of neutrality ultimately was embroidered with the metapsychologically derived justification that
anything else would lead to a gratification of the patient's libidinal wishes. Gratification would, it
was believed, attenuate the drive derivative material normally found through dreams and the
transference and would, therefore, reduce both the patient's motivation for treatment and the
accessibility of unconsciousconflict (Lindon, 1994; Schacter, 1994). Once situated in this
theoretical and therapeutic context, the concept of neutrality evolved from an ethical norm
serving as guardian of the analysis into the essential facilitator of the analytic process itself as it
preserved the conditions under which the unconscious could become conscious. It was believed
that any expression of the analyst's subjectivity would either contain suggestive elements that
could only obscure and contaminate the patient's unconscious, or diminish the expressive
power of the unconscious by draining off some of its energy via imagined or real gratifications. It
is no wonder, given these “scientific” rationales, that anything less than maintaining an opaque
presentation of self and a quarantine of one's subjectivity was considered a narcissistic
indulgence to be proscribed and treated with enmity.
The above justifications for the concepts of neutrality, abstinence, and anonymity have been the
subject of so many critiques that authors addressing the topic have wondered whether raising
the issue once more amounted to anything more than a straw man argument, while they
nonetheless marveled at the continued adherence to the concepts (Hoffman, 1983; Wachtel,
1986).
Deconstructive Analyses of the Concepts of Neutrality and Abstinence
The remarkable resilience of the concepts of neutrality, abstinence, and anonymity as core
elements in psychoanalytic technique in the face of challenges based on theory and technique is
indicative, I believe, of the covert use of these concepts to maintain hierarchical arrangements
of power and privilege in the psychoanalytic situation. The movement in psychoanalysis toward
an intersubjective view of the analytic interaction is built upon the deconstruction of the classical
idea of the analyst as an objective and neutral observer and responder to the patient's distorted
perceptions and attributions (Hoffman, 1983). As is the case in all deconstructive projects, this
one too is guided by the aim of exposing that which was previously obscured through the
obfuscating dynamics whereby power invisibly insinuates and perpetuates itself. For
psychoanalysis, deconstruction involves the transformation of what had been exclusively
considered as error—namely, the analyst's subjectivity—into a constitutive essence of the
analytic process. In proceeding along these lines, it is important that we keep in mind that
deconstructive projects are inherently subversive of the established order of things, that is, they
seek to reverse hierarchies of value by liberating what has been denigrated from its culturally
determined, politically motivated, and morally enforced subjugation. Two sources of covert
hierarchical arrangements masked by the concepts of neutrality and anonymity can be detected
in analysts' wishes to be perceived as authoritative and their needs to subdue their own erotic
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desires within the analytic interaction.
1. Anonymity in the Service of Idealization of the Analyst
Renik (1995) offered a deconstructive analysis of the technical principle of analytic anonymity
when he proposed that adherence to this principle of technique is unconsciously motivated by
the desire to maintain the idealization of analysts' superior knowledge and authority. As he put
it:
The pretense of anonymity is a cloak worn by the analyst when pictured as an authoritatively
objective observer, able to transcend his or her subjectivity in the treatment situation, an
analyst's conviction of being able to achieve authoritative objectivity, even to a relative degree,
constitutes a very powerful selfidealization; and it is this idealization of the analyst in which the
patient is encouraged to participate [p. 476]…. Whereas an analyst's effort to be anonymous is
supposed to allow the patient greater freedom to associate, the opposite is the case in my
experience. Far from diminishing the analyst's presence, a stance of nonselfdisclosure tends to
place the analyst center stage. It makes the analyst into a mystery, and paves the way for
regarding the analyst as an omniscient sphinx whose ways cannot be known and whose
authority, therefore, cannot be questioned [p. 482].
Renik's analysis of the principle of analytic anonymity stands as an exemplar of using
deconstructive methodology to further our appreciation of the hidden forces that are shaping
and maintaining the “givens” of our field. His work is reminiscent of a paper by Mark Wigley, the
curator of the 1988 exhibit on “Deconstructive Architecture” at the Museum of Modern Art in
New York. Wigley noted that a deconstructive architect is “not one who dismantles buildings,
but one who locates the inherent dilemmas within buildings. The deconstructive architect puts
pure forms of architectural tradition on the couch and identifies the symptoms of a repressed
impurity.” If architects can use the couch to identify symptoms of “repressed impurity,” then
surely psychoanalysts can do no less.
2. The Misogynist Roots of Neutrality
In addition and perhaps complementary to Renik's analysis, I believe that technical principles
that are remnants of a oneperson psychology retain their power because they originate, and
are deeply embedded, in male analysts' responses to female desire. There is, I believe, an
intricate weaving of Freud's experiences with hysteria, erotic transferences, theories of
technique, and ideas about female development. A highly condensed summary of these strands
in Freud's thought is that the female's perception of her absent genital, which culminates in
penis envy, has its clinical parallel in the female patient's seeking to lure the analyst into her lair,
and that the resolution of both the envy and the seduction require that all entreaties be refused
so that she may emerge from a pleasuredominated primary process into the constraints of the
reality principle.
Consider in this regard the foundational origins of the concepts of countertransference and
neutrality. Freud's first reference to countertransference appears in a 1909 letter in which he
responds to Jung's revelation of a sexual involvement with his patient Sabina Spielrein (Barron
and Hoffer, 1994; Tansey, 1994). On June 4, 1909, Jung wrote: “She was, of course,
systematically planning my seduction, which I considered inopportune. Now she is seeking
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revenge.” On June 7, Freud responded: “The way these women manage to charm us with
every conceivable psychic perfection until they have attained their purpose is one of nature's
greatest spectacles” and “I myself have never been taken in quite so badly, but I have come
very close to it a number of times and had a narrow escape…. They help us to develop the thick
skin we need and to dominate the ‘countertransference.’..” (McGuire, p. 231). In a similar vein,
Freud (1915) first uses the concept of neutrality to indicate a state of mind toward women
“acquired through keeping the countertransference in check” (p. 164). These first usages make
clear that the concepts of neutrality and abstinence were designed as technical guards against
male desire and fear in relation to their experience of the female patient as dangerously
seductive and that these concepts have their roots in the misogyny of the times.
From this perspective, we can compare Freud's technical posture to that of the ancient Ulysses
who, when he encountered the music of the Sirens, lashed himself to the mast in order to
experience the excitement of their sounds while refusing the seduction of their beautiful but
deadly call. I think we can imagine that for Freud, the voice of the Sirens was heard in the
fantastic claims and desires of his hysteric patients. If we allow ourselves this possibility, we
may permit ourselves to also say that it was Anna O's immaculate conception that fostered a
psychoanalytic vision of immaculate perception; a perception undistorted by the analyst's
subjectivity and a technique designed to ensure this purity.
Freud's technical injunctions have formed the bedrock of practice and, I believe, continue to
exert influence due to their gendered genealogy. Consider, for example, this quote from
Silverman (1985): “Although some analysts have viewed countertransference as a necessary
and desirable source of information about what is going on in the patient, it is my firm
impression that it always signifies that something has gone awry in the analyst's use of himself
as an analyzing instrument.” Although views of this sort may now represent a fading and
minority opinion, I believe that even among those analyst's who disagree, most continue to
retain a sense that analytic competence involves keeping countertransference private and
maintaining a stance of neutrality and abstinence in the face of temptation. Furthermore, it
seems to me that the advocates of an abstinent technique often convey the righteous air of the
warrior who does not succumb to his own or others' narcissism. It reflects a kind of machismo
that, when applied to the concepts of neutrality and abstinence is, I suggest, better referred to
as “macho to do about nothing,” and is indicative of the misogynist roots of the concept of
neutrality.
Redefining Neutrality as a Relational Event
As described earlier, neutrality has traditionally been defined in terms of the boundary functions
served by the concept (Freud, 1914; Hoffman, 1983, Panel, 1984; Poland, 1984; Shapiro,
1984; Hoffer, 1985; Greenberg, 1986; Franklin, 1990; Levy & Inderbitzen, 1992). Although the
definitions vary, each indicates the core position within psychoanalysis occupied by the concept
of neutrality, and, as such, reveals how the term has transcended its use as a descriptor of
psychoanalytic phenomena and has come to be an active force shaping the discourse about
psychoanalytic theory itself. Rather than review each definition, I will highlight a few with the aim
of questioning the familiar so that they may be critiqued and contrasted with an intersubjectively
anchored definition.
I propose that neutrality be redefined as a relational phenomenon that evolves and devolves
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throughout an analysis as patient and analyst create and destroy modes of engagement with
each other. As such, neutrality is not an attitude, nor a posture, nor a declination of action. It is
not abstinence, nor is it anonymity. It is not positioning oneself in an equidistant manner visàvis
the structures of the patient's psyche, nor a suspension of judgement, nor a refrain from
suggestion. It is not the embrace of uncertainty, nor the openness to new experience, nor a
respect for the essential otherness of the patient, nor a position between old and new
transferences. It is not even taking a position midway between viewing transference as a
distortion and as a plausible view of the analyst. It is none of these because each resides within
the analyst rather than within the relational matrix created by the analyst and the patient.
Just as we have come to think of transference and countertransference as relationally
intertwined phenomena that constitute each other (Aron, 1992a), so too should we approach
the idea of neutrality. Neutrality can only be meaningfully spoken of in relation to the
transferencecountertransference configuration—we can know it only as it stands apart from
transferencecountertransference dynamics. Neutrality comes into existence only as the analyst
and patient emerge from their embeddedness in a particular aspect of the transference
countertransference. As Stern (1992) noted, when “the grip of the field” can be broken and
transference and countertransference can be breached, if even for a fleeting moment, then “the
analyst or the patient comes upon a new way of seeing the other or himself that opens new
possibilities of interaction, which themselves then need to be described” (p. 359). I understand
this as implying that neutrality first makes its appearance as a moment of new appreciation of
the other, the self, and the self in interaction with the other; this state, however, is rapidly
threatened by the encroachments of the surrounding transferencecountertransference
configurations. Yet, in each moment of neutrality a degree of mutual recognition and trust is
established and becomes an available haven, one that may be found again in the midst of a
repetitive engagement in a transferencecountertransference scenario. The analysis proceeds
through the gradual and arduous accumulation of such neutral moments, and the safety they
contain, into an everwidening arena of clarity and potential space for both patient and analyst.
Neutrality is, therefore, a state of possibility and, as such, the extent of neutrality in an analysis
may be known via the range of the patient's freeassociation and the breadth of the analyst's
evenly hovering attention.
Neutrality is best thought of as a mutual achievement of patient and analyst. It is an
achievement that is the very purpose of a psychoanalysis and that, therefore, cannot be its
precondition. As a mutually created state, neutrality cannot simply be claimed by the analyst in
an a priori fashion. Patient and analyst together carve out zones of neutrality within the
transferencecountertransference configurations and it is the expansion of these zones that
moves the analysis towards its termination. It follows that we can say that full neutrality involves
the resolution of the transferencecountertransference paradigms that were implicated in the
patient's difficulties in living. Neutrality develops and marks the progression of an analysis from
embeddedness, through moments of novel experience, to new possibilities of engagement.
Intersubjective Resistance
Redefining neutrality in these terms allows us to reassess the theoretical and clinical status of
our ideas about resistance and selfdisclosure. Because neutrality, as defined here, refers to a
state of interactional possibility existing opposite a state of transferencecountertransference
embeddedness, mutual resistances, rather than the analyst's selfdisclosures, become the
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primary threat to and negation of neutrality.
From this relational perspective, resistances can be redefined as mutually constituted efforts by
patient and analyst to create and maintain nonprogressive interactive dynamics—ones that find
expression in enmeshed transferencecountertransference configurations. An enmeshment
precludes the ability to achieve a perspective on the interaction which allows for its
transformation. Enmeshment, or embeddedness, differs from a transference
countertransference engagement in that in the latter situation the dynamics, although reciprocal
in nature, do not involve a mutual investment in their perpetuation, and so are more transitory
and transparent. Transferencecountertransference enmeshments cannot exist solely within the
mind of one participant. Rather, they signify a joint project designed to suspend the
development of new modes of affecting and imagining the other and the relation. Such mutually
and reciprocally motivated states can be thought of as intersubjective resistances,1 as they are
sustained by each participant's efforts to maintain the other in the familiar transference
countertransference configuration. Intersubjective resistances and enmeshments are formed by
the reciprocal influence on each other of patient's and analyst's unconscious motivations and
are a constituent of the relational unconscious2 of the analytic pair. As such, the resolution of
intersubjective resistances depends on the understanding achieved by both analyst and patient
about how and why the unique strands of their individual dynamics were woven together to
form the particular fabric of their mutual resistance.
Understandings of this sort unravel intersubjective resistances and constitute neutrality.
Ironically, the conditions that provide the point of the greatest potential awareness of and
resolution of the mutual resistance and achievement of neutrality may occur when the analyst
enacts the countertransference via some breach in the normative conduct of the analysis.
Countertransference enactment has often been discussed as the analyst's mistake or error
(Chused, 1992), and even when its ubiquity and inevitability is noted (Renik, 1993), the analyst
has traditionally been enjoined to engage in a private selfanalysis of the enactment. The
knowledge from such a selfanalysis is intended to serve one of two functions—either to
cleanse the analyst from personal contaminants that distort his or her views of the patient, or, as
used by the more the more contemporary traditionalists, to illuminate aspects of the patient's
psychopathology through the recognition of processes involving projective identifications and
roleresponsiveness (Sandler, 1976; Jacobs, 1986, 1991; Ogden, 1986). In either of these ways
of assigning meaning to the countertransferentially motivated enactment, the analyst is asked to
accomplish his or her task unilaterally. Yet, if resistance and neutrality are understood as
relationally determined constructions, then exclusive reliance on selfanalysis of the
countertransference may be at crosspurposes with the basic tenets of a relational conflict and a
twoperson view of development and analysis. Some contemporary authors have attempted to
resolve this dilemma by highlighting the distinctions between mutuality and asymmetry in the
analysis (Aron, 1991, 1992b; Burke, 1992). However, in cases where a transference
countertransference enactment is apparent to both patient and analyst, unilateral selfanalysis
becomes an activity by the analyst that, by its exclusion of the patient, not only may isolate the
analyst from a full appreciation of the mutual sources of the creation and dissolution of the
transferencecountertransference, but may also leave the patient with the impression that
knowledge of unconscious motivations is more likely to be a source of danger than of freedom.
It is this challenge of analyzing a mutually constituted intersubjective resistance with the aim of
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emerging into a new neutral zone that I believe necessitates a reevaluation, and perhaps
redefinition as well, of the role and concept of selfdisclosure. Earlier I noted that the analyst's
selfdisclosure has typically achieved its meaning in the context of the traditional injunctions to
maintain neutrality. The shifts from driveconflict to relationalconflict and intersubjective models
of human development have brought us to a point where these underpinnings of clinical
technique have been severely shaken if not irreparably eroded. Yet, the possibility of the analyst
now being permitted, in Symington's (1983) felicitous phrase, “an act of freedom,” is seen by
many as an invitation to anarchy. Where do we draw the new lines and why?
I will try to provide a framework for furthering our explorations of this question after offering an
extended clinical vignette in which the analyst's disclosure figures prominently.
Case Vignette
In early September I learned that I would need to be out of town on Thursday and Friday of the
second week in November. During the next two weeks, I informed all of my patients about this
—with one exception. As the weeks passed, I would, during sessions, periodically realize that I
had not yet told Ms. A of my plans, yet I would rationalize not doing so at the moment due to
timing considerations and would then proceed to forget about it for another week or so. This
series of rationalizations and forgettings continued until the week of my departure. Close to the
end of the Monday session—Ms. A is in four times per week analysis and we meet on Monday,
Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday—I suddenly realized that I had neglected to tell her of my
imminent absence and I ended the session by saying, “Something unexpected has occurred
and I will not be able to meet with you this Thursday and Friday.”
Ms. A returned the next day expressing concern that something bad—perhaps a death in my
family—had occurred. As she elaborated this fantasy, she also began to express concern that I
might not return the following Monday, and she felt increasingly bereft about my loss and hers.
Her associations were consistent with various themes of loss that we had explored during the
previous five years of therapy and analysis, but my ability to listen was compromised as I was
troubled by my countertransference enactments of neglecting to tell her of my absence in a
timely manner, by my coverup of this fact, and by my leading her into a path of painful
associations. Given the strains and complexity of the moment, I decided to forgo an explicit
exploration of the countertransference and proceeded with a rather tedious exploration of her
fantasies of the reasons for my absence and of her associations to various historical parallels to
her current feelings. By the end of the session I was chagrined and perplexed, as well as
relieved that we would not be meeting for awhile, and I put the issue to rest for a few days.
On Sunday, as I flew back from the East Coast, I was reading an issue of the journal
Psychoanalytic Dialogues and began thinking about what had transpired with Ms. A. Various
countertransference possibilities came to mind. The most prominent of which, and therefore the
one I tried to give least credence to, was that I neglected to tell her because I imagined that
news of my absence would be followed by a period of intense anger at my unavailability—a
reaction embedded in a hostiledependent mode of relating that had marked the transference
for extended periods of time in the past and that I now wished to avoid. A related, but less
comfortable, thought was that I was the one who was reacting hostilely to her dependency by
not allowing her an opportunity to process my absence; furthermore, the lack of notice may
have been intended to stimulate her fears of an unpredictable abandonment over which she
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would have no control. In this scenario, I had left her in a position to masochistically endure my
sadistic impulse. Uncomfortable as this thought was, I could contextualize it as a reversal of my
frequently felt experience of being the object of her rage and could think of it as our being in the
midst of a transferencecountertransference configuration in which the question of who would
be the abuser and who would be the victim loomed prominently. A final and also related thought
was that I had acted in this way in order to elicit her inevitable conclusion that something terrible
had happened to me and that I was, therefore, entitled to her concern and sympathy rather than
vice versa. Let me add that as I imagined each of these scenarios I also attempted some
personal selfanalysis and succeeded in associating to a number of poignant memories and
affects about my own family history that were plausibly related to each of the hypotheses I had
entertained about my countertransference enactment.
I suppose I could have left it at that—I could have concluded this selfanalysis of my
countertransference reassured that I had arrived at a deeper appreciation of the transference
countertransference configurations in which my enactment was embedded and, moreover,
feeling comforted that I was now aware of the previously unconscious personal memories and
meanings that her transference had elicited in me. Equipped with this new understanding, I
could have returned Monday to continue the analysis through interpretations of her transference
and resistance.
There was, however, a persistent and disquieting doubt about my selfanalysis—on what basis
could I authorize myself to assume that I had correctly analyzed that which I had just enacted?
My own personal analysis did provide me greater access to memories and feelings about my
childhood relations, derivatives of which no doubt infiltrated into some aspects of the
countertransference, and my selfanalysis served to illuminate these possibilities. Yet, if my
enactment was a manifestation of a resistancewithin the treatment situation, then there was no
logical reason to think that my selfanalysis could, even in the most optimal circumstance,
provide the insights necessary to unravel all that impeded my knowledge of my motivations. I
thought that perhaps I should present this case to a consultant who, standing apart from the
sources of the resistances, could offer a fresh perspective. This alternative was appealing for
awhile, yet soon left me feeling that I would be pursuing a secondhand opinion prior to
addressing the problem at its source, namely, within the treatment. Besides, there remained
one other vexing consideration—how was I to deal with my own discomfort at having told Ms. A
a lie (to which she had, no doubt, gathered associations over the weekend and that would be at
the center of her thoughts on Monday)?
Please recall that these ruminations were initiated while I was reading through an issue of
Psychoanalytic Dialogues, one that concerned itself with the question, “What Does the Analyst
Know?” (Symposium, 1993). Suddenly it occurred to me to begin the Monday hour by informing
Ms A. about what had really transpired and then to invite her to talk about what she imagined
might have led me to act the way I did. I was immediately intrigued by this prospect, but soon
recoiled from it with suspicions about my motivations and concerns about her response.
Nonetheless, my interest in pursuing this approach remained and before long I found myself
seeking to justify my departure from the canonical pattern of the standard analytic conversation.
Only half in jest, I told myself that this selfdisclosure would be an experiment in technique
undertaken with the moral imprimatur and theoretical safety provided by proceeding according
to the epistemological principles of the socialconstructivist paradigm.
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So, on Monday morning, I prepared to sacrifice us in the interest of science and began the hour
by saying, “There is something that I want to tell you. I had known since September that I would
be out last Thursday and Friday and I told all my patients about it back then except for you. Last
Monday, when I realized that I had not yet said anything to you about this, I covered up my
omission by saying that ‘Something unexpected had come up.’ I imagine you may have many
reactions to this, but first I'd like to ask you if you have any thoughts about why I acted in this
way.”
Ms. A responded by saying, “You didn't want to leave, so maybe you avoided telling me. Or
maybe you were too busy listening to me and you weren't trying to get away from me so you
forgot … maybe you like being with me.” She then lapsed into silence for a few minutes. I was
startled by her response because I had not entertained this possibility at all and, having
imagined a response closer to my own thoughts about the countertransference, was
anticipating feelings of despair and fury. During her silence, I let her words percolate and a
variety of affectionate thoughts came to mind, including my sense of intrigue about her
development and pleasure in her progress in analysis; I felt fortunate to be her analyst. Then I
recalled that although we had both learned in early September of the possibility that she might
be offered a promotion in the spring that would necessitate her leaving the area and her
analysis by the following fall, we had devoted relatively little direct attention to this.
During the past few months she had acted in an increasingly autonomous manner and her
dependency on the analysis began to shift. At times, her moves toward greater independence
brought a regressive reemergence of the hostiledependency that characterized the early and
middle periods of the analysis, yet these regressive pulls yielded to analytic work as we
increasingly came to recognize the various conflicts that activated her retreat from experiencing
herself as a competent and attractive woman.
Ms. A broke my reverie by saying, “You're probably just so tired of me pulling at you all the time
that you can't wait to get away. That's why you didn't tell me on Monday that you forgot. You
were scared of getting me angry and so you lied to me.” And now her despair and fury began to
emerge. I intervened and said, “I had your sympathy last week, not your anger”, and as I said
this I thought to myself that I had reversed the role not to avoid her anger at my departure but
rather to be consoled by her for the loss I would feel upon her departure. So I added, “Just as
you wish to be dependent on me, I too can have a wish to keep you dependent on me.” She
cried some and then said, “It feels so different to think that you can want that too, rather than to
feel you're angry at me for wanting to be dependent and my being angry at you for not letting
me be.” I responded by saying that my wish to keep her dependent on me could be just as
destructive as a wish to be rid of her. She agreed, but added, “It is so much more touching.”
And I said “It was touching to me too since it was gratifying to me that you were concerned
about me when I told you that ‘something unexpected came up and I needed to miss our
sessions.’ I also managed to get you to treat me as you at times want me to treat you.”
In the following session Ms. A talked about feeling stunned by our interaction and said that the
session and aftermath felt like a “profound upheaval.” Our discussions that day were marked by
a sense of clarity and sober vitality and included references to her ambivalent feelings about her
possible departure. Yet, over the ensuing sessions, Ms. A's mood flattened and the
predominant theme once again became her difficulties in imagining and maintaining a positive
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feeling about her body and herself as a woman. In various ways we came back to the theme of
how hard it was for her to imagine being the object of someone else's desire. About two weeks
later, in the midst of a conversation about her sense of herself as not existing in anyone's mind,
I reminded her that she had thought that the reason I had neglected to tell her of my impending
absence was that I did not want to leave her. She responded by denying that she had ever said
this, and attributed the remark entirely to me. I was once again startled and, although I felt
certain of my memory of the event, I reread my notes and, reassured that the lapse this time
was hers rather than mine, I ultimately read her remarks from two weeks ago back to her. Now
she was startled, and after a period of silence began to talk about how hard it was for her to
believe that she actually said what she did because it was so distant from her current
experience of herself.
Ms. A had always considered my interpretations of her tendency to dissemble any positive
experience of herself as my attempt to maintain a semblance of hope or to soothe her, or, on a
bad day, as evidence of my theorybound distance from her sense of herself as irreparably
defective. Now we began to talk about how the idea that she was able to attract my interest and
desire was difficult for each of us to maintain in our minds. This topic, however, soon evolved
into an intellectualized conversation that left us both enervated, and soon Ms. A was
reimmersed in her conviction that her body would inevitably be found repulsive and scorned by
any man who came into contact with it. Within a short while, she began to express disgust
about her eating habits and weight gain over the past few days—symptoms that while mild at
present, were quite severe at the beginning of treatment.
In the midst of this, she arrived one day wearing a new pair of men's hightop sneakers. I had
noticed in the past that whenever she wore these hightop sneakers, she would be quite
despondent and discouraged about the possibility of ever attracting a man's attention. About
oneandahalf years earlier, I shared this observation with her and we came to understand it as
symbolic of her attempts to resolve a variety of conflicts about her femininity via masculine
identifications. The sneakers did not reappear until this day. Ms. A began the session by telling
me in a hesitant voice that she had masturbated the evening before to a fantasy of bringing me
to orgasm. She fell silent for a short while and then resumed, saying that she did not want to
describe the details because it might be too provocative. I was somewhat surprised about this
concern because over the years many of our sessions had contained detailed erotic fantasies. I
asked what she thought might occur if I did indeed become aroused. She answered quickly that
she feared I would become angry with her and feel disgusted as well. Immediately following this
she recalled a memory of which she had never before spoken. One summer day, when she
was about 12 years old, she was in her room alone and began to masturbate while lying on her
bed. Suddenly her father appeared in the doorway, looked at her, and then turned away and
left abruptly. In the instant that she saw him, Ms. A recalled seeing a look of disgust on his face;
a look that until this moment she had associated with his displeasure at her subsequent and
significant weight problems during adolescence. This memory served to illuminate her
contemporary conviction that all men would react to her sexuality with disgust.
We now returned to the consideration of our mutual difficulty in maintaining a
consciousrepresentation of her as a woman of considerable appeal, and we explored the
reciprocal influences of our resistances to the perception of her as desirable. These resistances,
although initiated by her historical conflicts, gained their power in the analysis via mutually
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constituted constraints in affect and imagination. The process of gaining an awareness of the

mutuality of these resistances was initiated by Ms. A's response to my countertransference
enactment. Her insights about my error allowed us both to reconstruct the problematic idea of
both childhood and contemporary life, namely, that the other's affectionate idea or feeling about
her could not be held in mind, but rather, invoked defensive undoing, denial, and repression.
As our attachment to an image of her as problematic and undesirable came to be understood
as an intersubjective resistance to an excitement about her sexuality, this jointly constructed and
accepted knowledge began to inform our interactions, and our embeddedness in this
transferencecountertransferencedynamic began to lose its hold. We could now recognize and
react to its continued subtle and nuanced pulls toward enactment more rapidly and with a newly
won degree of neutrality.
SelfDisclosure
An analyst's act of revealing a countertransference enactment, and then eliciting the patient's
interpretations of the motivations implicated in the enactment, represents a powerful
destabilizing force in any psychoanalysis. And, as a consequence, both clinical theory and lore
are brimming with injunctions against the analyst's disclosure of his or her subjectivity. These
range from carefully reasoned arguments about how selfdisclosure impedes the therapeutic
action of psychoanalysis to more polemic and ad hominem attacks on the wouldbe discloser as
enacting unresolved neurotic and narcissistic conflicts. Whether by persuasion or shame, the
analyst has traditionally been enjoined from playing with fire; a fire that only destroys and does
not illuminate. In these formulations one can imagine that the shadow cast by Breuer and Anna
O. a hundred years ago continues to keep us in the dark.
Contemporary relational and constructivist theories permit a wider latitude of expression to the
analyst's subjectivity, and, therefore, must confront the challenge of charting a clinically sound
course between the dangers and opportunities of abandoning the traditional concept of
neutrality in favor of more personally expressive possibilities.3 Perhaps our history can help us
in this task. Just as psychoanalysts' early excitement about the liberating possibilities of making
the unconsciousconscious led to the dangers of wild analysis, so too does the increasing
interest in the analyst's subjectivity threaten to elude containment. Yet, recall that the threat of
wild analysis diminished as the exclusive emphasis on revealing the content of the patient's
repressions was replaced by the analysis of the processes of patient's resistance. A similar
emphasis on analysis of mutually constructed resistances can provide a contemporary
grounding for the analyst's exploration of the meanings of both participants' subjectivities.
Informed by this perspective, the analyst's use of selfdisclosure is in the service of increasing
both participants' understanding of the dynamics that constrain novel experience. Implicit in
maintaining the focus on the analysis of intersubjective resistances is that such an approach to
selfdisclosure eschews simple revelations of the analyst's affects or history. Rather, a
disciplined approach to selfdisclosure involves a continuous scrutiny of its motives and
repercussions (Hoffman, 1992b). The judicious use of selfdisclosure occurs within the basic
psychoanalytic project of analyzing, and so becomes both an instrument of the analysis and, in
subsequent moments, a subject of the analysis. In this way, we retain the widely held idea that
the core of any psychoanalytic process is the analysis of transference and resistance (Boesky,
1990). As Freud (1914) noted with regard to these essential components: “Any line of
investigation which recognizes these two facts and takes them as the startingpoint of its work
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has a right to call itself psychoanalysis, even though it arrives at results other than my own” (p.
16).
Because the ability to the objective about our own subjectivity is always constrained to a greater
or lesser degree, we disclose our subjectivity with the purpose of moving the analysis through
mutual resistances and into zones of neutrality. One technical implication of this is that the direct
introduction of the analyst's subjectivity has its greatest potential utility at the very moment that
its silent expression threatens the progress of the analysis. These are times when the
enmeshed transferencecountertransferencedynamic reveals itself via a countertransference
enactment. At these times, the analyst indirectly brings the unconscious mutual resistances to
the foreground and, in the act, signifies his or her compromised wish and fear of revealing his or
her subjectivity. Also represented in this complex state is an invitation to the patient to join the
process of discovery, for inherent in every enactment is, I believe, the expression of the
fundamental need for an other's subjectivity to facilitate a full appreciation of one's own.
When the analyst strives to make this explicit, the analysis may be furthered not only by dint of
the specific knowledge that is gathered, but also by the patient's becoming aware of how the
analyst struggles with his or her own conflicts. By allowing the patient access to himself or
herself as a subject in the analysis, the analyst reveals a process of knowing rather than a
known product. As Bollas (1989) noted: “I intend the patient to participate in the evolution of my
own thinking on the way to knowing” (p. 73). By proceeding in this manner, the analyst indicates
that unconsciousprocesses are universal and can be a source of constructive and reparative
engagement rather than only the repository of unacceptable impulses. It also enables the
patient to have a new experience of an other who, by not foreclosing his or her experience, is
able to contain multiple versions of truth and reality as well as the affects that irradiate such
disparate perceptions. This is the developmental aspect of intersubjectivity that Spezzano
(1996, this issue) describes, and to which Bollas (1987) alluded when he wrote that:
When the analysand discovers through experience that his analyst is receiving the
transference via his own inner experiencing, and when he discovers that the analyst is
considering his own inner life, however distressing, in order to understand his patient's
communications more fully, in that moment he realizes that both he and his analyst share the
selfanalytic function [p. 255].
I would like to conclude by noting that by locating the analyst's participation within relational and
constructivist redefinitions of neutrality and resistance, we embody the belief that, in the end,
analysis is not furthered by seeking an illusory vein of pure gold but rather through practice of
that unique alchemy—the mixing of two subjectivities—which permits the transformation of the
repressed and devalued into a currency of worth.
Footnotes
1 The concept of intersubjective resistance is introduced here to provide a contrast with
intrapsychic resistance and is partially constituted by what Racker (1968) described as the
analyst's counterresistance to the patient's intrapsychic resistance.
2 In another work (Gerson, 1995), I propose that the reciprocal and mutual influence of
unconscious minds on one another creates a relational unconscious, and I define this as a
process whereby people enter into unconscious relations with each other in search of, and
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defending against, recognition and expression of their individual subjectivities.
3
For discussions about ways to consider and appraise the utility of the analyst's selfdisclosure,
see Bollas, 1983, 1992; Tansey and Burke, 1989; Maroda, 1991; Blechner, 1992; Burke, 1992;
Ehrenberg, 1992; Hoffman, 1992a; and Greenberg, 1995.
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constituted constraints in affect and imagination. The process of gaining an awareness of the

5 Barron , J. & Hoffer , A. (1994), Historical events reinforcing Freud's emphasis on “holding

14 Burke , W. (1992), Countertransference disclosure and the asymmetry/mutuality dilemma.

30 Hoffman , I. (1992b), Expressive participation and the psychoanalytic discipline. Contemp.

31 Jacobs , T. (1986), On countertransference enactments. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 34 :

55 Tansey , M. & Burke , W. (1989), Understanding Countertransference. Hillsdale, NJ: The

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