On writing from clinical experience

Papers that present the life of the analytic session offer material through which analysts can together study analytic process and therapeutic action and arrive at consensus on how to improve psychoanalytic theory and practice. But some analysts have been deterred from publishing clinical material of that kind because of concerns about preserving confidentiality, protecting the therapeutic relationship, reporting accurately, being scrutinized, worrying about losing their colleagues' support, and not feeling authorized to present their views. Here conscious, preconscious, and unconscious constraints against writing and publishing are explored, and an example is given of successful self-analysis of a writing inhibition. The debate over the ethics of writing is reviewed and an argument made that detailed clinical description is useful in advancing analytic understanding. Finally, a clinical example shows how the analysand usefully analyzes the experience of reading what the analyst has written, and how the analyst's self-analysis may be promoted in resonance with the analysand's experience.