Authenticity and the psychology of choice in the analyst

There is a growing appreciation of an ethic of authenticity in analytic technique, a trend related to a recognition of the engagement of the spontaneous, unconscious dimension of the analyst's mind in the clinical situation. This liberatory trend in our theory of technique can and should be elaborated to take account of situations in which the analyst deliberately and strategically attempts to influence the patient for both analytic and therapeutic purposes. There is a complex, dialectical relationship between intentionally planning to provide mutative relational experiences for a patient and the irreducible emotional responsivity that marks every analytic encounter. It is suggested that the dangers of the patient's compliance with and idealization of the analyst usually associated with the analyst's deliberate enacting of attitudes presumed to be mutative are not necessarily inevitable.