Self‐disclosure ain't what it's cracked up to be, at least not yet

Some Thoughts on Self-Disclosure

This paper explores the pros and cons of self-disclosure and self revelation in the analyst. It takes as its starting point a paper by Jeffrey Stern that shows a mixed but generally positive outcome of an incident of self-disclosure. The trend in more recent times has been toward somewhat more self-disclosure, with modern analysts' views on a continuum. The author discusses an example from his own practice, in which he delayed self-disclosure for some time, but did reveal facts about himself, and how this had a mostly positive outcome. He concludes by distinguishing self-disclosure that entails stating facts about self from self-revelation, when the analyst tells his feelings about some specifics from his own life or in the patient's disclosure. Such revelation is not likely to be beneficial to the therapeutic alliance in its early stages, but may be of value as the analytic relationship and trust develop over longer time.

The reluctance to self-disclose: reflexive or reasoned?

Despite a growing body of clinical literature advocating the thoughtful and judicious use of self-disclosure in psychoanalysis, there remains a reflexive reluctance to intervene in this way by many analysts of various theoretical persuasions. Why is this the case? Four motives for this reflexive reluctance to self-disclose are discussed: (1) theoretical reasons; (2) psychoanalytic authoritarianism; (3) fears of influencing the patient through suggestion; and (4) the analyst's personality characteristics. Examining the reasons for this state of affairs should help to reduce the rigidity or orthodoxy with which clinical psychoanalysis is practiced.

Analytic neutrality, anonymity, abstinence, and elective self-disclosure

Recent contributions to the psychoanalytic literature propose new ways of understanding analytic neutrality, anonymity, abstinence, and self-disclosure. They advocate elective self-disclosure by the analyst as an antidote to the allegedly game-playing quality of transference and resistance analysis. The analytic relationship, they assert, becomes unreal when attempts are made to observe the principles of neutrality and abstinence. Both are seen as ill-conceived because of the irreducible subjectivity and unwarranted authority of the analyst. These relational and interactional views are criticized because (1) they ignore the fact that transference and resistance analysis have from Freud onward been accepted as minimal criteria qualifying a clinical process as psychoanalytic; (2) elective self-disclosure carries metapsychological implications dismissing not only Freud's theory of motivation but motivation as a basic feature of human personality; (3) they do not recognize interpersonal relations as mental events and so do not consider the ego's ability to create intrapsychic representations of object relations; (4) elective self-disclosures within the empathic parameters of the analytic situation are themselves unreal compared to the reality of the patient's experience with other objects. Abstinence and neutrality as ideals facilitate maintenance of an internal holding environment or container for the analyst's countertransference.

Back to the future

Significant components of psychoanalytic technique, and the theory that underlies it, seem to remain buried in our past, but are central to the growth of psychoanalysis as a treatment method based on understanding a patient's mind. By updating technique based on a theory of mind with structure, the author views the increasing freedom of the patient's mind as central to the curative process, and takes the position that in interpretive work, the analyst needs to pay more attention to the patient's capacity to meaningfully receive and integrate the analyst's interventions.

Personal disclosure revisited

In this paper personal disclosure is defined as a conscious verbal presentation to the patient by the therapist of a personal vignette accompanied by the appropriate dynamic formulation and resolution of a given personal area of conflict. It is conceptualized within theoretical formulations which consider the therapeutic relationship a dyad, where the reality of the patient and the reality of the therapist influence each other, providing the matrix through which the resolution of the patient's past life experiences takes place in the context of this new interpersonal experience. It is specifically differentiated from a boundary violation, because the personal disclosure is brought to the patient's interactional awareness not for gratification of the therapist's sexual or narcissistic needs, but to provoke a response in the patient's conceptualization of a phenomenon being presented in the session and to actively influence the intersubjective field. Within the conceptual framework developed in this paper, personal disclosure reaffirms the patient's current self-discovery and provides for a different formative experience. Personal disclosure is not to be used by the therapist as a vehicle to resolve personal conflicts or as source of personal gratification. When used within the context developed in this paper, personal disclosure enhances both the patient's therapeutic process and the therapist's ever-evolving growth.

The problem of self-disclosure in psychoanalysis

The problem of self-disclosure is explored in relation to currently shifting paradigms of the nature of the analytic relation and analytic interaction. Relational and intersubjective perspectives emphasize the role of self-disclosure as not merely allowable, but as an essential facilitating aspect of the analytic dialogue, in keeping with the role of the analyst as a contributing partner in the process. At the opposite extreme, advocates of classical anonymity stress the importance of neutrality and abstinence. The paper seeks to chart a course between unconstrained self-disclosure and absolute anonymity, both of which foster misalliances. Self-disclosure is seen as at times contributory to the analytic process, and at times deleterious. The decision whether to self-disclose, what to disclose, and when and how, should be guided by the analyst's perspective on neutrality, conceived as a mental stance in which the analyst assesses and decides what, at any given point, seems to contribute to the analytic process and the patient's therapeutic benefit. The major risk in self-disclosure is the tendency to draw the analytic interaction into the real relation between analyst and patient, thus diminishing or distorting the therapeutic alliance, mitigating transference expression, and compromising therapeutic effectiveness.