ABSTRACT
In undertaking the task of responding to the case material of Greg and Lottie, I am reminded of the unpublished paper, written in 1983, by the American psychoanalyst, Robert Stoller. According to Kirsner (2001), who writes about this study in his paper on the future of psychoanalytic institutions, Stoller, while working at UCLA, filmed a session with a patient and then showed this session to twenty-seven professors of psychiatry. These professors could not agree on the issues, except to concur that the patient was “not elated” ! Kirsner further noted that Stoller found,
Experts disagree on their interpretations of what is happening at the moment, what has been happening during the course of the therapy, what happened in the patient’s life that contributed to the problems and what should be said and done from moment to moment in a psychotherapy session in order for us to do our best work. (p. 198)
