ABSTRACT
Imprisoned analysands develop distinctive versions of the common fear of being emotionally spontaneous. The imprisoned analysand certainly would never venture an interpretation or openly question one made by the analyst, for the guard is capricious, the prison rules of analytic conduct are complex, exacting, and ultimately unfathomable, and the punishment so certain to be severe that some propitiatory self-punishment may be one’s only hope of survival. For the imprisoned analysand, the analyst is that sort of terrifying guard no matter how the analysis is being conducted. As the story of the imprisoned analysand is intermittently encountered and constructed over the course of an analysis, it will be retold by the analyst in the terms of our well-established psychoanalytic variables. With regard to technical difficulties, however, it is worth spending a little more of our time on the analyst’s countertransference responses to the imprisoned analysand.
