To recognise oneself

Publishing touches on fundamental questions of abstinence, it has an impact on our treatments. It is most likely impossible to prevent patients from recognising themselves (or wanting to recognise themselves) in clinical reports, but steps should be taken to prevent third parties from identifying them. My suggestion is to view anonymisation as a multi-stage process, in which the original clinical event is first documented and recorded in the form of a narrative based on the subjective experience of the analyst. This first step already constitutes an interpretation, as it usually involves a selection and summary of the clinical material. In a second step, a more general insight must be abstracted from this initial observation, one that applies not only to this specific individual case. Only after a structure has been identified does the actual anonymisation take place in the third step, in which the knowledge or hypothesis gained (about this structure) is illustrated in the form of a clinical vignette. This multi-stage process is illustrated with a clinical example. Whether this process provides sufficient protection against recognition by third parties presumably depends on the degree of acquaintance or intimacy between the analysand and the respective third party.