Notes on the Analytic True Self for Another

This personal essay explores the core of the author’s analytic way of being and relating. This fundamental place he calls the “analytic true self for another,” an aspirational engagement that embodies two ethical intentions: being present and relating with true feeling. To be present is what Gabriel Marcel names presence and availability: a porousness in the analyst, an openness to the influx of the patient’s emotions and states of mind that the analyst inhabits. True feeling, a phrase after the painter Robert Motherwell, describes the creative process of acting from a place of freedom, honesty, and at times spontaneity. The analytic true self for another is a relational modification of Winnicott’s idea: being and acting in a way that represents who one is as a person and as an analyst for the patient. The author explores the therapeutic value of practicing from these values. Two clinical situations illustrate these two ethical modes of being and relating. The essay intends to engage the reader in a dialogue of self-exploration, searching out a foundation from within, in each of us, in the practice of psychoanalysis.