1
Stephen M. Sonnenberg, M.D. (1991) The Analyst's Self-Analysis and its Impact on
Clinical Work: A Comment on the Sources and Importance of Personal Insights. J.
Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 39:687-704
ABSTRACT
In reviewing descriptions of self-analysis in the literature, as part of an ongoing inquiry into
the nature and role of self-analysis in the life and work of the psychoanalyst, the author
noted a focus on circumscribed self-analytic work, or on a method for self-analysis that did
not stress its clinical relevance. Missing were descriptions of the encompassing, multisourced, multimotivated, interminable nature of self-analysis in the analyst's work life and
personal life.
In response to those findings, the author focuses on the conduct of his self-analysis over a
period of several months, following an illness experienced by his mother. He attempts to
convey certain qualities of his self-analysis: it goes on all the time, it is variously fueled by
experiences in and outside his consulting room, and it is practiced self-consciously and with
self-discipline. He also describes the ways in which his self-analysis enhances his clinical
effectiveness and promotes his personal growth, and notes that all of an analyst's
experiences are interconnected opportunities for personal and professional development.
AS PART OF AN ONGOING INQUIRY into the nature and role of self-analysis in the life
and work of the psychoanalyst, in this paper aspects of its relevance to clinical work shall
be discussed (Sonnenberg, 1990).
What follows may seem to be a discussion of countertransference, but that represents too
narrow a perspective. While
- 687 the writings of American analysts over recent decades focus on the usefulness of
understanding the countertransference (Weigert, 1952), and lead to a recognition of it as a
potentially valuable tool in analytic work (Kern, 1978); (McLaughlin, 1975), (1981),
(1988), McLaughlin (1981, p. 639) notes that it is more appropriate to think of
countertransference as the analyst's transference. Indeed, McLaughlin (p. 659) recognizes
transference as an inevitable and ever-present part of everyone's life experience.
Transference, then, is a part of the analyst's life experience restricted neither to working
hours, nor hours outside the consulting room.
This paper is based on the view that transference is a category of personal psychological
experience with which the analyst should deal self-analytically, just as he does with other
mental phenomena that command his attention or concern. Thus, it is self-analysis on
which this description concentrates.
Based on my own experience, as well as that of colleagues with whom I have discussed
these matters, I believe that while analysts use their analytic abilities when they are with
their analysands, many often reflect deeply on the clinical questions they are investigating
while outside their offices. And, by employing self-analytic examination of their ideas, and
their seemingly "random" thoughts, which may occur not only when they are in the
presence of an analysand, but also when they are thinking about one outside the office, they
sometimes discover relationships to clinical puzzles they are pondering. It is usual for
some analysts, then, to learn about an analysand by self-analyzing their thoughts, feelings,
and fantasies not only in analytic hours, but also when they are alone.
Another idea which is of relevance here is that of the analyst as self-inquirer. Cooper
(1987, p. 86) points out that in the views of many contemporary American analysts both
analyst and patient grow during the analysand's analytic experience (McLaughlin, 1981, p.
2
647); (1988, pp. 384, 388). If this happens, it is likely that in the course of an analyst's
emotional growth outside the analytic setting the development of insight may be
- 688 stimulated by recent experiences in the consulting room. Also, it follows that the opposite
happens: insights experienced through the analyst's personal growth-producing life
experiences may shed new light on existing clinical mysteries. The analyst, according to all
this, does not lead a life of separate compartments: all experiences are, or can be,
connected; those that are seemingly disconnected to current clinical practice potentially can
be put to clinical use by the analyst.
Relevant also to this discussion are recent ideas about analytic termination and efficacy,
which suggest that the well analyzed person has developed an effective tool for thinking
about his existence, solving problems as they emerge, and growing throughout life (Norman
et al., 1976, p. 496). Those emphasizing this viewpoint judge the effectiveness of a
psychoanalysis by the former analysand's ability to recognize intrapsychic conflicts, and
resolve them through self-analysis (E. Ticho, 1972, p. 322). The analyst, on the receiving
end of powerful transferences all day long, is likely to find his conflicts activated
frequently, perhaps constantly. So the analyst's life affords a remarkable opportunity for
ever-increasing levels of self-awareness and growth, through self-analysis (McLaughlin,
1988), of the conflicts activated as part of his work. At the same time, such self-analytic
practice is a necessity if the analyst is to work effectively.
Reflecting this necessity, and these trends in the thinking of analysts about themselves and
their work, there have been several recent papers in which analysts have discussed the role
of self-analysis in their lives (Calder, 1980); (Beiser, 1984); (McLaughlin, 1988) and the
lives of their colleagues (G. Ticho, 1967). These accounts, in the tradition Freud
established by his own example (Gay, 1988, pp. 96–100), and prescribed for the
generations in Analysis Terminable and Interminable(1937), indicate that the analyst can
and must use the self-analytic tool as he works. There are also elaborations on that theme
in both the contemporary literature on general technique (Gray, 1982); (Schafer, 1983, p.
48); (Schwaber, 1983, pp. 388–391), (1986) and
- 689 in the more specific literature on how self-analysis can be a central tool in the analyst's
technical arsenal (Kern, 1978); (McLaughlin, 1981), (1988).
Yet many papers on self-analysis tend to be rather sharply circumscribed in what is
discussed. A good example is Beiser's (1984) description of her countertransference
response to a patient, in which she recognizes the arousal of old oedipal conflicts. She
indicates (p. 5) that this experience is "unusual" for her, and that self-analysis is not a
systematically practiced component of her work life. Calder's (1980) report of his
systematic, ongoing self-analysis is circumscribed in a different way, in that he does not
describe in significant detail its relation to clinical work. Finally, G. Ticho's (1967)
description of the experiences of many colleagues does not include clinical detail.
In sum, so far the thrust of the technical literature has been to note the importance of selfanalysis, and state the conditions necessary for its exercise, without detailed examination of
how it may be an essential, encompassing, multi-sourced, multimotivated, and ongoing
aspect of the analyst's work life and personal life.
Several additional reasons for the recent interest in self-analysis should be mentioned.
Analysts have challenged themselves to understand better the process of analysis (Stein,
1988), and within that framework an understanding of the analyst's clinical use of selfanalysis is an important task. Also, from within the field and from without, analysts are
facing the challenge of investigating the efficacy of their therapy. If the efficacy of the
3
process involves the analysand learning to self-analyze, it is important for analysts to look
inward and describe openly how they have acquired and practice that skill. After all,
analysts themselves constitute an important group of former, most often successfully
treated, patients. Finally, analysts live in a world where medical decision-making is
increasingly coming under scrutiny, and as difficult as it may be to explain to non analysts,
if analytic decision-making involves self-analysis, the profession had better come to grips
with it and figure out how to describe it.
- 690 For all the reasons given so far—clinical, scientific, and educational—self-analysis
commands my attention. And with all that in mind, but especially with clinical perspective,
the reader is asked to consider what will now be described: a segment of my self-analysis
which lasted for several months.
The method of this essay—to concentrate on one period of time, and one aspect of an
analyst's self-analysis—is designed not to describe in the broadest possible terms the nature
of my current self-analytic experience. Yet an important goal of this contribution is to
broaden the existing description the literature offers of self-analysis, to convey something
more of the timelessness of it, and of the ways in which every aspect of an analyst's life is
but a part of a whole, providing material for self-analytic scrutiny which can enhance
understanding of all that he experiences, including what he experiences within his
consulting room.
Appropriate steps are taken to disguise the identity of the patients described, but in
describing my own thinking about myself, I try to omit as little as possible. Yet because I
am mindful that what I write could potentially complicate what is an already difficult task
for me and my analysands, sometimes less detail is made available, and the result is what
may seem to be too general a description of an analyst's self-inquiry. Given all my clinical
and personal concerns, the goal is still to describe a complex and deeply personal selfanalytic process, in as much detail as possible.
The Setting
About three years ago I became aware of a serious illness in my seventy-seven-year-old
mother. In the course of a routine examination a large aortic aneurysm had been
discovered, and given her age and the size of the lesion, there was no question that surgical
intervention was both necessary and dangerous. At that time, more than ever before, I was
responsible for the welfare of my previously robust and still entirely competent
- 691 parents. This was so because I was the family member best equipped to investigate who
was best at performing such surgery, and guide my parents to what would constitute the
best possible venue for medical treatment. Further, when it turned out that there were many
imponderables as to where the very best surgical team was located, and where my father,
too, would do best during the post-operative period, there were complex considerations to
be weighed.
During this time I experienced a reactivation of a set of conflicts familiar to all of us who
practice psychoanalysis: I began to remember more vividly my feelings as a young and
only child during World War II, when it appeared my father would go off to war, and I
would be left with my mother. The self-analytic organizer for understanding these concerns
was a memory I had considered during my analysis ten years earlier. It was of my mother
and me going to the mailbox every day, during 1943 and 1944, in anticipation of finding
my father's draft notice. In analysis I had learned that in that memory there were threads
that referred to my wish for and fear of an oedipal victory (both because of my wishes for a
4
decisive oedipal triumph, and the reality of the War, I was very fearful that my father would
not return); my sense of pleasure at the prospect of having my mother to myself; and my
guilt over wishing to see my father gone. Finally, what made this set of ideas even more
complicated is the fact that my mother was quite psychologically attuned to me. This
created a closeness which made our trips together to the mailbox highly charged, from the
point of view of my experience.
I spent considerable time pondering my feelings about my parents, and the ways I
reexperienced old feelings about them when there existed a threat to my mother's life and to
my father's happiness. I understood more profoundly than ever before that the death of
either parent constituted for me a powerful potential source of guilt, which in each case
related to the oedipal constellation, and which as regards my father was reinforced by the
strength of my wishes toward him and
- 692 the circumstances under which I had originally experienced them.
My self-analysis of these reactivated and reexperienced thoughts and feelings was effective.
I must stress that what I was dealing with was what had been central in my analysis, a selfanalytic process which G. Ticho (1967) describes as the "continuous working-through of
ever-new derivatives of the core neurotic conflicts and overdetermined symptoms" (p. 316).
So it is not especially surprising that as I recognized the role these conflicts had in my
responses to this stressful situation, the details of my psychological processes were
increasingly available for me to bring to the fore of my consciousness, as I did in the
outside world what needed to be done. Repression soon was an at least manageable
problem, and anxiety referable to reactivated conflicts was recognizable. I was able to
think with relative clarity about the here-and-now situation, to be responsive to my parents
and brother, and to come to grips with what might happen. On the day of my mother's
surgery I was deeply concerned, comforted by the knowledge that her chances were good
and that she was in excellent hands, satisfied that I was available for my father, and, while I
anticipated a successful outcome, I was also prepared for the worst. This had constituted
for me a very significant opportunity for growth. Though it is not one I would wish on
anyone, it was an opportunity which most of us will face.
Clinical Reverberations
There were many interconnected reverberations of this experience which directly
influenced my work as an analyst. One incident occurred about two months later, in the
course of my work with a fifty-year-old, long married professional man, who was then in
his sixth year of analysis. His father had died when the patient was eight, and he
alternatingly related to me in the transference as passive, guilt-expiating son to father,
reflecting his guilt over having murdered his father, and as passive son to
- 693 mother, hoping to expiate his guilt over destroying his mother's husband. During one hour
he produced the fantasy that he was in my basement, chained and bound, and I was forcing
my penis into his mouth. Then, he pictured himself at age nine, leaning his head against the
voluptuous breasts of his mother, whom he pictured in fantasy as a blond bombshell.
The following day he began his hour by nothing that the day before he had been furious at
me; he then feel asleep, snoring loudly. After ten minutes, uncertain of what to do, I woke
him by asking if he had been aware of any mental or dreamlike activity; he said he had not.
I asked if he had any thoughts about some advantage he might have experienced in falling
asleep just then, and he began to discuss the defenses against anger he used within the
analysis. These included lateness, feeling sleepy, falling asleep, and silence. He noted that
5
as a youngster he had been taught to "master anger—you shouldn't give in to it or express
it." In this self-reflective portion of his analytic hour this man associated and analyzed
without any intervention. As he left, at the end of his hour, I noted in myself a trace of
anxiety.
Self-analysis at first revealed to me that I had wished to make a genetic interpretation
regarding my patient's fantasy of the day before, which would incorporate his defense of
that day. Unable to do so, I had experienced that signal of anxiety, though I should add
that, as in the production of most affects, there were several determinants, including the
memory of my uncertainty at what to do when my patient fell deeply asleep. But I still
wondered why that wish had been so strong, and so I reflected further. Self-analysis then
allowed me to understand more about my desire to make a detailed genetic reconstruction
when I lacked the necessary data.
What had happened was this: around the time I was arranging my mother's surgery I had
met with a former teacher of mine, a very senior analyst, who is well known for his genetic
interpretations. I had been in a private debate with this person, and had proven him wrong,
to his satisfaction, on a point of
- 694 some importance. This had served to motivate my unconscious wish to surrender to him,
particularly strong at the time, given what I was experiencing with respect to my parents.
Further, though I had mastered to a significant degree my increasing oedipal conflicts
during the preoperative period, as I already described, my feelings about my mentor
reflected those conflicts, had been for the most part unconscious, and had not been selfanalyzed.
My enhanced vulnerability and sensitivity to my own conflicts about oedipal competition,
then, were troublesome despite my self-conscious efforts at mastery through insight. My
experience of a displaced and derivative oedipal fantasy with my former teacher, which
remained unconscious and capable of influencing me without my realizing it, is offered as
but one example of the influence of my personal concerns on my clinical work at that time.
Knowing myself as I do, if I had not attended to that signal of anxiety, if I had not
employed self-analysis, the resulting compromise formation would have taken the form of
an inappropriately elaborate interpretation, accompanied in my by further uncertainty and
anxiety, and a sense of defeat. This would have occurred at my patient's next analytic hour,
and when it happened I might not have remembered that trace of anxiety, which had in fact
set my self-analytic activities in motion. And, I am fairly sure, my therapeutic effort would
have been less useful.
It is important to stress that this vignette is one of many which could be offered to illustrate
how recent experiences with my parents left me more vulnerable to errors in my clinical
work. In this instance, by employing self-analysis, it appears that a liability had been
turned into what might even be described as an asset. I had been able to learn more about
myself and grow personally; I had been able to understand the influence of my recently
reactivated oedipal concerns on my interactions with a senior colleague and a patient; and I
had understood a source of anxiety in a clinical setting and been able to prevent it from
interfering in my work. Finally, I was more
- 695 sensitive to the possibility of related errors with other analysands.
Here a note of caution must be added, for it is not my intention to raise the banner of selfanalysis and proclaim overwhelming victory for the well-intentioned analyst in his serious
effort to keep his analytic capabilities well calibrated. There were many instances in which,
at that time, my clinical abilities were adversely affected by my conflicts, and in some cases
6
I was not able to recognize such negative influences. But by self-analyzing, I was able to at
least improve on my clinical performance.
A Clinical Breakthrough
A description of the treatment of another analysand, with whom I was then at something of
a stalemate, will further define the role self-analysis played in my work at that time. It was
10 weeks after my mother's surgery, and she and my father were wintering in a warm part
of the country, where I attended a professional meeting. I had not seen my mother since
she left the hospital, after her successful surgery, and I planned to attend to my professional
business, and then visit for a night and a day with my parents.
When I saw them I was both comforted and disconcerted. My mother was doing well. But
an old equilibrium between my parents had been disrupted: though only temporarily, my
mother was without energy, and my father felt depressed, because he no longer had the
pleasurable opportunity to do things within my robust mother, which he had long enjoyed.
In the midst of my mother's convalescence, my father's understandable sadness again stirred
within me the powerful emotions of old conflicts involving competition with him. But
there were other feelings, varieties of sadness and regret, and still others I could not
identify. Although I wished it were not so, the forces of repression, coupled with attention
to helping my parents deal with some immediate concerns, left me without time to
- 696 understand what was causing me discomfort. So I left at the end of my visit, and headed for
the airport, feeling unaccountably sad.
When I arrived at the airport, though, a new set of concerns presented itself to me. It was a
Sunday evening, and I learned that for business reasons my flight had been canceled. I
made my alternate plans as best I could, and sat down to wait for a possible flight home. I
began to think of what the next day would be like, starting with my first early-morning
patient, with me in a state of exhaustion. Then I found myself fantasizing about a patient
who often came first thing in the morning, but who was not scheduled to come that next
day. That patient, I fantasized, would not have his appointment, because I would not get a
flight home, and would miss my morning hours. Then I imagined the patient committing
suicide as a result of the missed hour, and my going to the head of the airline which
canceled my flight, and angrily informing him of the consequence of his outrageous
business practice.
It occurred to me, as I considered this fantasy, that it might relate to old ideas of mine about
a medical condition my mother experienced when I was a child, which I had subsequently
believed endangered her survival and that of my unborn brother, during her pregnancy a
few years later. I had come to understand that during that pregnancy I had felt helpless
because of my inability to aid her, enraged by her pregnancy, and guiltily responsible for
her welfare and my unborn brother's. So now I considered the possibility that I felt a
similar helplessness in relation to my mother. I thought it was possible that I was
completing the conditions of that old set of ideas by reexperiencing that helplessness, and
joining with it an aggressive wish toward my brother, using my patient as his
representative. But I was not satisfied with those ideas, I did not feel a sense of conviction
that I understood my fantasy about my patient, and I wondered if I was defending against
an awareness of other wishes and feelings.
- 697 I was startled as I considered what I had been thinking, because I realized how much anger
I felt toward my patient, and that its depth and intensity had previously eluded me. Not
only did this become apparent to me as I considered my fantasy, but even more remarkable,
7
I realized that this patient worked for the very airline that had canceled my flight. And so,
as I sat there at the airport, I pondered just what was going on between me and my patient.
I employed free association, and periodically I stepped back in my thinking and considered
logically what was coming to mind. I followed my associations as they covered various
recent and important events, including my reactions to my mother's illness and my father's
sadness, at the time of her hospitalization and now, and the connection between those
experiences, and what I had learned from them, and my fantasy in the airport. In retrospect,
this was a clinical awakening, and in my self-analytic experience I was like the patients
described by Stein (1981) when they were helped to examine the "unobjectionable part of
the transference."
What I came up with was this: I had recently been having a difficult time recognizing my
patient's rage, because he and I shared some things in common, in terms of family history
and personality style. My patient, who was a professional man in his mid-thirties, and had
been in analysis for five years, came from a family where he enjoyed a closeness to his
mother. Just as I had felt close to my mother because she was psychologically attuned to
me, my patient shared with his mother a special sense of connection, in his case because she
admired him for his uncommon beauty. In the context of this highly charged, admiring
relationship, he interacted with his highly competitive father. Competition between father
and son had not been softened by father's capacity to empathize, which was limited. In
family games and conversations, my patient was almost always humiliated, made to feel
trivial by his father, and also felt impotent rage. In the present, influenced by his
reexperiencing of the past, my patient often felt powerless as he dealt with male authority
figures.
- 698 While there were only limited similarities between this description and the one I have
already offered about myself, what was most strikingly similar in my personality and that of
my patient was a tendency to defend against angry feelings experienced in relation to
frustration with authority figures, with a conscious attitude of competence, confidence, and
sometimes arrogance. A source of strength on which this defense drew was the closeness
we each felt with our mothers, and because we were both intellectually able and worked
with our minds in professions, we were able to convince ourselves, even if at times no one
else, of our essentially benign and constructive motives. I knew I had dealt with this in my
own analysis and in subsequent self-analysis, and I was aware of my difficulty in seeing the
derivatives of aggression in my analysands when they were cloaked by competent, oftentimes professional, altruism. But I also realized, sitting at that airport, that while this
analysis had progressed over the years, in working with this man recently, it was
particularly hard for me to recognize his rage in his free associations, and to interpret it.
This I connected to my own reaction to my mother's illness: though I was actively selfanalyzing, I was tending to defend against certain aggressive feelings of my own, in my
particular way, and that left me less sensitive to that similar process in my patient.
Clearly, my fantasy, which I believed I had been free to have because of my recent selfanalytic work, included several determinants that were sources of technical and personal
concern: my patient had been, throughout his analysis, furious at me; my patient defended
well against awareness of this fury, and for long periods of time, off and on, he was not
consciously aware of it. I, in turn, had sometimes defended against recognition of his fury,
by denying my reactive fury at him; I had sometimes maintained this conspiracy of
unrecognition by employing the same defense he did—a self-conscious sense of altruistic,
professional motivation; these defenses were so strong that it was at times a battle to remain
aware of his rage. Superimposed on all that, my current sense of stalemate reflected my
8
- 699 increased difficulty in keeping this man's rage in focus. This difficulty was related to my
wish to avoid coming to grips with the influence in him and in me of the special advantage
and disadvantage of being the son of a mother with whom one shared a special closeness.
The complex wishes, thoughts, and feelings which had been aroused in me by my mother's
illness had rendered me unusually sad during my visit, and while I had recognized
competitive oedipal feelings toward my father, and had been sad to see him unhappy, I had
not fully appreciated the congruence I felt with him in our mutual sense of loss over the
reality of my mother's convalescence. Now I could understand that, and my accompanying
anger, as well.
I was able, further, to recognize in my fantasy my understanding of the congruence, the
identification my patient felt with his boss, and the meaning of my fantasied exchange with
the head of the company—and my patient. I realized I saw my patient as deriving much
sadistic gratification out of working for a powerful businessman, who systematically
committed acts of irresponsibility involving the public. Indeed, it was my patient, I knew,
who was responsible for rationalizing these acts, presenting them to the public as though
they were appropriate. In this way he also identified with his own father, who had had a
similar job in his youth, and defended against recognizing both his own and his father's
sadism. Further, by placing myself in the position of telling this powerful man that my
patient, his employee, had committed suicide because he had prevented my return to my
office, I was telling my patient that I recognized my rage at him and his at me, his father,
his employer, and himself. Once again, all this would not have been possible without the
self-analytic activities in which I had been engaged surrounding my mother's illness, and of
which this current exercise in introspection was a part.
There is a happy ending to this story. When I returned to my office I found myself listening
in a more attuned fashion to my patient. In the months that followed, together we brought
into much sharper focus his rage at male authority figures,
- 700 including me, and specifically his sense of rage because he believed we were trying to keep
him down, take advantage of him, keep him in his place. We came to recognize that he felt
constantly humiliated by father and that memories of his humiliation were a source for his
feelings about me and his bosses. We were able to understand his competitive feelings
toward these men and me not just as responses to his beliefs about our competitive feelings
toward him, but as feelings that existed within him regardless of what he thought of our
behavior or intentions. We also worked on the way in which, by maintaining what was in
some ways a submissive relationship to his bosses and to me, he defended against
recognizing his feelings of rage and competition and, at the same time, through his
employment, expressed his sadism "in the service" of others.
What continued to be of great interest to me was that the force of repression still worked
within me, to erode my understanding of this man. Of equal interest, was how I had to, and
was able to, use various ongoing self-analytic experiences as aids in my work with this
patient. But on that I shall not elaborate, because I believe I have made my point: the
analyst's self-analysis must, if only for clinical reasons, encompass his entire life
experience, and continue interminably.
Discussion
I do not intend these comments as criticisms of what has come before, for it is the
foundation on which this elaboration rests. Kern's (1978) remarkable description of selfanalysis, in which he relates the discovery of visual imagery which may exist over long
9
periods of time, and which can, through self-analysis, explicate for him his relationship
with his patient and his patient's unconscious process, is compelling. McLaughlin, too, has
made several very important contributions (1975), (1981), (1988). I believe in his work on
the analyst's insights he has given us an opportunity to observe the way he uses his own
mind in the
- 701 service of self-analysis, both for his own benefit and that of his analysands.
What has struck me, though, is that in general the literature on self-analysis tends to
describe the analyst as a compartmentalized human being, as if his self-analytic work were
fragmented, and perhaps only sporadic. Indeed, I wonder if this characteristic of the
literature is an artifact, a function of an effort to describe scientifically what self-analysis is
all about. For, as Firestein notes (1978, p. 253), self-analysis is still "an area not sharply
defined."
What I have attempted to convey in this paper is that my self-analytic functions—
admittedly very imperfect—are stimulated by the same range of forces that stimulated
parallel analytic functions during my analysis. Life events, fantasies, work with patients,
dreams, and my own personal history all converge, pushed by my basic impulses, to cause
me to think as I do. The analytic tool offers me an opportunity to examine my thoughts and
feelings, my dreams and fantasies, my symptoms and the best of times I experience, so that
I can gain self-knowledge throughout my life. By practicing such self-analysis I can at least
try to actualize many opportunities for growth (Emde, 1985), and as I do so I function in the
service of my patients, as well.
To that end I have also tried to convey something of the timeless nature of self-analysis, as I
practice it. In reviewing aspects of my ongoing self-analysis and the implications of what I
have described for pieces of clinical work I have attempted to show that my self-analysis
goes on all the time, variously fueled by experiences in and outside my consulting room. In
a self-conscious and self-disciplined fashion, I almost always self-analyze for about 15
minutes after I see my last patient of the day, and I begin the process by reflecting back on
my day; I should also add that this does not take a lot of time. I do it sometimes, when it is
necessary and appropriate, in the course of analytic hours; sometimes while walking;
sometimes before falling asleep at night; and sometimes as I sit at my desk. But I spend
- 702 far less specific time each day doing this than the time it took me to have an analytic hour.
Stein (1988, pp. 122–123) enjoins us to describe the process of analysis, and to do so in
personal ways, writing in the first person. He suggests that this can be done in
nonexhibitionistic fashion. I happen to agree with him. I realize that I have given up an
amount of privacy by writing this paper, but I also think that what I am describing, the
difficult and inexact process and yet essential role of self-analysis in my life and work—the
life and work of an analyst—goes to the heart of what we are, as a profession. And I
believe that writing about how we are, as a profession. And I believe that writing about
how we self-analyze is essential to the advancement of our science.
In this and a series of related papers I am attempting to describe my self-analytic mental
processes as they relate to my entire life, but especially to my analytic work life, to the
functioning of my analytic work ego (Olinick et al., 1973). In previous descriptions of
introducing psychiatric residents to psychoanalysis (Sonnenberg, 1990) and
interdisciplinary research, I have tried to convey the ways in which I use my self-analytic
skills in order to most effectively perform educational and research tasks. In this paper the
focus is on clinical work, and the description of self-analysis more detailed. Yet the goal is
the same, as I attempt to convey how, as a psychoanalyst, I think.
10
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