ABSTRACT
The capacity to acknowledge the existence of a personal relationship with one’s patients and the wherewithal to engage in it freely in a manner that complements the specific needs of each treatment situation lends a dimension of genuineness and authenticity to the relationship that has profound implications for the way analysis is experienced, and even how technical principles are applied. The trend to “depersonalize” the psychoanalytic relationship is surprisingly recent. In this chapter, I explore some key questions: what accounts for this glaring dichotomy in our conception of the personal relationship, and why is there such reluctance to recognize and, in turn, systematically explore the vital role this relationship plays in the analytic process? Why does the word ‘personal’ arouse so much concern that it has been more or less banished from our characterization of this process? Finally, what role does the psychoanalytic conception of the unconscious play in these considerations, and how did our conception of transference as a strictly unconscious phenomenon become incompatible with the notion of a personal dimension to the analytic relationship?
