ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a sub-optimal form of connoisseurship shared by two individuals, examining its operation in a variety of configurations between mentor and protege, parent and child, analytic supervisor and supervisee, and analyst and patient. Destructive forms of connoisseurship in later life reflect a childhood experience of cumulatively traumatic relations with overly demanding, excessively insensitive parental figures. In psychoanalytic circles as well, people may fall prey to the narcissistic gratification of fostering connoisseurship too intently and insensitively vis-a-vis our students and supervisees. Kohut and Wolf are quick to clarify that such narcissistic tendencies are not necessarily pathologic. However, when they are pathologic and do not resolve into a more even-handed connection of some kind, the result may be a problematic, compulsive search for connoisseurship-based relating that ends up being deleterious. Loewald's thinking suggests a developmental trajectory that might undergird a connoisseurship mode of relating.
