The problems of intentional therapist self-disclosure in psychoanalytic therapy : a critical response to Zelda Knight

Zelda Knight's defence of intentional self-disclosure by the therapist / analyst as legitimate technique warrants a full reply, not merely because self-disclosure is controversial, but because I think her particular arguments for, and illustration of, this intervention implicitly contradict the analytic attitude and the very essence of psychoanalytic inquiry. In the course of this reply to her paper, I will outline some of the specific problems with her approach to self-disclosure, before arguing that there is something fundamentally non-analytic in her understanding of the therapeutic relationship. My critique is not motivated by any reactionary 'traditional' psychoanalytic ideology - I subscribe to no particular school of psychoanalytic thought - but by concern that in the absence of formal psychoanalytic training in this "psychoanalytic diaspora" (Swartz, 2007), we risk seeing the emergence of diluted 'psychoanalytic' therapies that are indistinguishable from a variety of humanistic or eclectic approaches