ABSTRACT
Although aware of the limitations of perceptual reality, Freud at the same time desired to create an objective science of psychoanalysis. This meant the analyst becoming, as much as possible, an analytic instrument, free of distorting subjective influence. An unavoidable dimension of psi exists in all situations involving human beings, including the therapist's clinical relationships and communications. Feeling that "pit in the stomach" pain, the group therapist may take evasive action. The therapist's reactions are idiosyncratic and specific to the intersubjective context, tested, monitored, and responded to with varying accuracy by others. Ideally, empathic and truth-seeking needs of patients will come to support one another. However, an aspect of human growth and development is to accept another type of "pit in the stomach" anxiety: that which arises from awareness of the inevitable element of separation between people and between what can be known and what can be tolerated.
