ABSTRACT
Nancy Chodorow is a training analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School; and professor emerita of sociology at University of California, Berkeley. She has written on gender and sexuality, Hans Loewald, the American independent tradition, comparative theory, and psychoanalysis and social science. After making important contributions to the field of feminist sociology, particularly regarding mothering and gender, Nancy Chodorow turned to the study of psychoanalysis. Dr Chodorow referred to her capacity for being a good friend as part of her maternal heritage. Dr Chodorow is quite upset about what she sees as the contemporary analytic trend towards excessive focus on the experience of the analyst, and on the analyst–analysand interaction. The metaphor of the analyst as friend, specifically in the sense that Dr Chodorow is imagining, seems a useful addition to the various ways we imagine the analytic relationship, and is consonant with Leo Stone ’s and Loewald’s ideas.
