ABSTRACT
In a series of papers over the past decade, Allannah Furlong has examined some of the technical stresses inherent in the classical psychoanalytic frame and their clinical and ethical implications. Here she discusses confidentiality as a beleaguered aspect of the analytic frame. In the early 1990s, the legal fallout from the recovered-memory debate brought sharply into focus the dubious probative value of using in court “evidence” from the psychotherapeutic process. Defendants in sexual-assault trials began seeking access to the personal files of complainants. Bioethical conceptions of informed consent threatened to become the standard for all professional work. As a result, the psychoanalytic frame was placed at risk of distortion and collapse. In this chapter, Furlong reasons from the inside out the clinical and theoretical foundation for confidentiality as it is actually practiced in the psychoanalytic situation, the better to distinguish the specific implications for clinical work of sharing it with colleagues and with third parties.
