ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author shares his experiences as a psychoanalyst. When in London the author knew there were certain things wrong with the British Society, but he was too closely involved to be able to see them properly. There was the sense that analysts were defending the emotional viewpoint of the icons in their School and that if one of them were attacked they would rush to his or her defense. In the British Society psychoanalysts have a situation that is very like that. There is one conclusion from this that is unavoidable: that none of us is able to tolerate criticism. When an Independent gets up to give a paper, his fellow Independents all go to his defense and the same is so of the Kleinians and the Freudians. The phenomenon coincided with what the author was saying about the individual analyst really defending, in the guise of his or her icon, his own narcissistic self.
