ABSTRACT
The air of analytic sessions is always thick with implications of goodness. On the one hand, many versions of “badness” pervade analysands’ self-descriptions, actings out, and condemnations of others; these versions imply goodness as their alternative. On the other hand are hidden moral references to goodness in such common locutions as “good-hearted,” “good intentions,” and “it is good for me.” Also, upon analysis, one encounters many usages that seem more or less removed from goodness and yet are freighted with moral or moralistic imperatives: “a good time,” “a good game,” and “a good session.” Goodness flourishes as an idea and a value in that other reality, the internal world of unconscious fantasy.
