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FrancoAngeli Journals

Articoli

No. 54 (2021)

Self-disclosure, Trauma and the Pressures on the Analyst

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/jun54-2021oa13278
Submitted
gennaio 31, 2022
Published
2022-02-10

Abstract

This paper argues that self-disclosure is intimately related to traumatic experience and the pressures on the analyst not to re-traumatize the patient or repeat traumatic dynamics. The paper gives a number of examples of such pressures and outlines the difficulties the analyst may experience in adopting an analytic attitude – attempting to stay as closely as possible with what the patient brings. It suggests that self-disclosure may be used to try to disconfirm the patient's negative sense of themselves or the analyst, or to try to induce a positive sense of self or of the analyst which, whilst well-meaning, may be missing the point and may be prolonging the patient's distress. Examples are given of staying with the co-construction of the traumatic early relational dynamics and thus working through the traumatic complex; this attitude is compared and contrasted with some relational psychoanalytic attitudes

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