ABSTRACT
Approaching this chapter with carte blanche to write about virtually any subjective topic I might choose, ironically, and surprisingly to me, I found myself confronting some of the very same issues that inspired me to undertake The Human Dimension in Psychoanalytic Practice way back in 1977. That book, a compila-tion of essays exploring the analyst’s subjectivity, was similar in spirit to this one. In it, I criticized the paucity of self-revealing publications by analysts at the time, noting that there existed – publicly, at least – a “phobic attitude toward the inner life of the analyst” (p. 2). I saw analysts’ personal openness and the dialogue associated with what I then called the “human dimension” in our work as essential – beneficial to us, to patients, and to the field in general.
