ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysts have long been aware that in the day-to-day practice of their somewhat subjective art they can become seduced by their own explanatory constructs. As in any developing discipline there is an intrinsic pressure to accept the empirical success of one’s own technique as objective validation for a particular theory of psychological functioning and growth, and refuting those concepts which seem to oppose it. Thus ideational systems become “fact,” and “truth” is discovered. Levenson (1972) has developed some general implications of this phenomenon in what he calls “the time-bound nature of psychoanalytic truth.” More specifically, a relatively experienced and successful therapist, trying to formulate what he does, must derive his conceptual position, at least in part, from a fundamental need to maintain cognitive consistency. 2 His relative dependence upon data coming from within his consulting room fosters the rigidifying of a shared belief system which makes sense of the evidence that his own technique is effective in some consistent way. Commitment to a particular version of psychoanalytic “truth” is therefore not only time bound; it is also bound to the cognitive demand to give structural meaning to the basic dimensions of one’s effectiveness at any given point in time while keeping the door open to reconceptualization and change.
