ABSTRACT
This chapter describes disclosure of personal information about the analyst, including countertransference and non-countertransference information, can occur productively with all patients, not just those with problems as difficult and painful as those of the patient. Disclosure of countertransference or non-countertransference feelings and facts about the analyst can be useful when resistances and negative transferences are entrenched, when the therapist has made a painful or telling slip and when the patient is stuck in feelings of isolation or despair. The idea of sharing personal experiences, other than one’s experience with the patient, is usually met with disapproval, anxiety, or at least uncertainty by psychoanalytic colleagues. An analyst’s disclosure of personal information is most genuinely and usefully done in a trusting relation, with analyst trusting the patient as well as the patient trusting the analyst. Relationship between therapist and patient, both analyst and patient come to believe that the self-disclosure is for the sake of the analysis rather than for other motives.
