ABSTRACT
The history of psychoanalysis, particularly in America, is replete with telling illustrations of the vicissitudes of the difficulties which psychoanalysts suffer at the hands of their patients, and patients at the hands of their psychoanalysts. These illustrations are not always presented as actual cases. A patient was a patient and could and must therefore be looked upon with almost frigid objectivity, somewhat in the manner of the pathologist performing an autopsy. Imperviousness would be a mark of an autistic character which any analyst can ill afford to possess, and such insensitiveness would mark the analyst as an even more autistic person than is good for everyday living, let alone everyday work with patients’ emotions and minds. The effect of the psychoanalyst’s personality on the patient and the effect of psychoanalysis on the patient are conglomerated with many external circumstances, social and individual and not lending themselves to the understanding of even the most sagacious sociologist or psychologist.
