PROD #: 01005

Psychoanalytic Psychology Copyright 2002 by the Educational Publishing Foundation

2002, Vol. 19, No. 3, 435–454 0736-9735/02/$5.00 DOI: 10.1037//0736-9735.19.3.435

Countertransference Temptation and the

Use of Self-Disclosure by
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Psychotherapists in Training
A Discussion for Beginning Psychotherapists
and Their Supervisors

J. Timothy Davis, PhD

Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and Judge Baker
Children’s Center, Harvard Medical School

Most recent articles on self-disclosure have addressed ad-

vanced questions of theory and technique related to self-
disclosure in psychoanalysis. This article, however, takes up
issues related to the use of self-disclosure by psychotherapists
in training. Rather than arguing categorically that beginning
psychotherapists should or should not use self-disclosure,
the focus here is on the factors influencing the decision of
whether or not to make a self-disclosure. Illustrated by two
case examples, it is argued that because of their relative lack of
experience in working with transference and countertransfer-
ence, beginning therapists are especially susceptible to the
temptation to use self-disclosure and nondisclosure to close

J. Timothy Davis, PhD, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, Boston, Massa-
chusetts, and Judge Baker Children’s Center, Harvard Medical School.
An earlier version of this article was presented at the Winter Meetings of the
American Psychoanalytic Association, New York, December 1996. I wish to acknowl-
edge Jack Foehl, Anton Kris, Sydney Pulver, Dawn Obeidallah Davis, and the review-
ers for their thoughtful comments and helpful suggestions on drafts of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to J. Timothy
Davis, PhD, 15 Story Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138. E-mail: james_davis@
hms.harvard.edu

435
 436 DAVIS

off—rather than to analyze—a patient’s intense transference

feelings.

In recent years, the topic of self-disclosure has received considerable

attention in the psychoanalytic literature (e.g., Cooper, 1998a, 1998b;
Davies, 1994; Ehrenberg, 1995; Greenberg, 1995; Renik, 1999). Many of
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these articles address subtle questions of theory and technique specifically

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related to the use of self-disclosure in psychoanalysis. My experiences,

however, as a supervisor of psychotherapists in training—as well as my
own experiences learning to practice psychotherapy—suggest that self-
disclosure is also an important issue for psychotherapists in the beginning
stages of grasping psychodynamic theory and technique.
This article is written for these psychodynamic psychotherapists in
training, as well as for their supervisors. The purpose here is not to argue
categorically that beginning psychotherapists should or should not use
self-disclosure. Instead, after briefly reviewing the history of the debate
surrounding self-disclosure in psychoanalysis, the focus turns to a discus-
sion of the role of “countertransference temptation” in influencing a thera-
pist’s decision of whether or not to make a self-disclosure. Specifically, I
argue that a temptation can arise, which may be strongest in psychothera-
pists at the beginning of their careers, to use self-disclosure and nondis-
closure to close off—rather than to analyze and foster the development
of—patients’ intense transference feelings. I illustrate this temptation as it
affects trainees using the cases of two patients I treated during my own
training.

Anonymity and Self-Disclosure

Psychodynamically interested therapists still frequently begin their ca-

reers—and their own personal treatments—with the idea that the most
rigorous psychoanalysis and analytic psychotherapy is conducted by thera-
pists who carefully avoid self-disclosures. This expectation has its basis in
a long tradition in analytic technique which has asserted that analytic
exploration is best promoted when the particulars of the therapist’s1 day-
to-day life, as well as his or her personal thoughts, feelings, concerns, and
conflicts, remain unknown to the patient. This stance of anonymity has

1
I use the terms analyst, psychoanalyst, therapist, and psychotherapist inter-
changeably to refer to a practitioner of psychoanalysis or psychoanalytically informed
psychotherapy.
 COUNTERTRANSFERENCE TEMPTATION AND SELF-DISCLOSURE 437

been argued to originate with Freud (1912/1958), who recommended that

“the doctor should be opaque to his patient and, like a mirror, should show
nothing but what is shown to him” (p. 118).2
According to the proponents of anonymity, strict nondisclosure rep-
resents superior technique because knowledge of the analyst can interfere
with a patient’s freedom of associations. Disclosures about the analyst’s
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life, it is argued, foreclose the development of transference fantasies that

involve elements that are contradictory to the disclosed facts. Furthermore,
certain self-disclosures—for example, that the analyst has a serious ill-
ness—can block a patient’s freedom of associations because of the inhib-
iting anxiety that such disclosures can arouse (Schwaber, 1998). Addi-
tionally, Arlow (1969) has suggested that a stance of anonymity best
facilitates the analysis of transference. In his view, when the patient has
little or no actual knowledge about the analyst, it is easier for the pa-
tient to recognize that his or her thoughts and feelings about the analyst
must represent transference given that there is no other basis for the
impressions.
This view of anonymity is largely based on classical psychoanalytic
theory of technique, which has as a central aim limiting the analyst’s
“contamination” of the patient’s associative process. The goal of classical
technique is for the patient’s conflicts and transferences to be projected in
“pure form” onto the “blank screen” that the analyst’s anonymity provides.
From this “objective position” outside of the process, the analyst can
interpret the unconscious meanings of the associations. Any impact of the
analyst’s personality or psychodynamics on the analytic process is con-
sidered to be undesirable. Classical psychoanalytic theory, therefore, has
been characterized as a “one-person” theory of analysis because the
subject of analytic investigation is the intrapsychic dynamics of one
person, the patient. Relational (e.g., Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983;
Mitchell, 1988) and intersubjective (e.g., Atwood & Stolorow, 1984) psy-
choanalytic theories, by contrast, view psychoanalysis as an inherently
“two-person” enterprise. According to these two-person theories, the ana-
lyst is a full participant in the psychoanalytic process who necessarily,
unavoidably, and uniquely influences that process. Rather than trying in
vain to eliminate this influence, relational and intersubjective theories aim

2
Whether or not Freud actually advocated a stance of anonymity is unclear;
however, there is considerable evidence to suggest that he did not practice it (e.g.,
Roazen, 1995).
 438 DAVIS

to make the mutual influence between analyst and patient a subject of

analytic investigation.
Influenced by relational and intersubjective perspectives, current
psychoanalytic views of self-disclosure are generally more flexible and
more diverse than in the past. Renik (1995) suggests that even those
psychoanalysts who still consider a stance of anonymity to represent su-
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perior analytic technique would nevertheless acknowledge that self-

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disclosure is unavoidable with certain types of patients (e.g., adolescents,

paranoid or narcissistically vulnerable adults). With these patients, many
analysts adopt the approach of first answering a question and then, if
possible, trying to analyze its associative meanings.
Many of those psychoanalysts practicing from within relational and
intersubjective perspectives (e.g., Greenberg, 1995; Renik, 1995; Singer,
1977) reject the concept of anonymity entirely; they argue that it is im-
possible to be anonymous. All therapists, even those who are strict non-
disclosers, inadvertently convey much information to their patients. Psy-
chotherapists reveal themselves through the way they dress, their hairstyle,
and how the office is decorated, among other ways. Therapists in training
often disclose their relative inexperience and lower professional status
through their youth, lack of a terminal degree (e.g., MSW or PhD), and
shared or poorly appointed offices. Also, therapists disclose a great deal
about who they are through their in-session behavior (Hoffman, 1983).
What associations an analyst chooses to comment on, what the analyst
says when he or she comments, and what provokes spontaneous displays
of emotion in the analyst reveal much about the analyst and his or her
deepest values, wishes, fears, and conflicts (Singer, 1977). According
to Singer (1977), even interpretations, the epitome of psychoanalytic
interventions, “are neither exclusively nor even primarily comments
about . . . clients’ deeper motivations but first and foremost [are] self-
revealing remarks” (p. 183). This is inevitably true, in Singer’s view,
because “the basic precondition for empathic communication is . . . per-
sonal knowledge of the experience under scrutiny—or as common lan-
guage has it, ‘it takes one to know one’ ” (pp. 182–183).3

3
Because of the historical relationship of self-disclosure to anonymity, almost
anything that reveals something about the analyst (i.e., that reduces anonymity) has
been considered to be self-disclosure. As a result, many disparate analytic events have
been artificially and unhelpfully grouped together under the heading “self-disclosure.”
The term self-disclosure has been used in the literature to refer to the inadvertent
revelations that result from one’s choice of dress, choice of interpretations, spontane-
ous expressions of emotion, and so on, as well as deliberate disclosures. Even delib-
 COUNTERTRANSFERENCE TEMPTATION AND SELF-DISCLOSURE 439

Renik (1995) and Singer (1977) take the critique even further. They
argue that anonymity is not just impossible to achieve, but that it is
harmful to the analytic process for a therapist even to strive for partial
anonymity. One problem with the concept of anonymity is that it promotes
a myth that the analyst can reduce, or even eliminate, his or her impact on
the patient’s associations through silence and nondisclosure. This myth is
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reflected in the old analytic saying that recommends when in doubt “don’t
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just do something, sit there!” In not answering a patient’s question, or in

remaining silent, a therapist is very much doing something (Lipton, 1977).
The patient, in turn, responds to the analyst’s silence by giving his or her
own meaning to it. The nondisclosing analyst may be experienced as
withholding by some patients and as selfless by others (Renik, 1995), but
it is unlikely he or she will be perceived to be a blank screen. Patients give
both self-disclosure and nondisclosure unique meanings, providing grist
for the transference. Therefore, the patient’s reactions to both are worthy
subjects of analytic exploration. The concept of anonymity, however,
obscures the fact that nondisclosure and self-disclosure are both actions in
the analytic relationship.
An even more profound problem associated with anonymity, accord-
ing to Singer (1977) and Renik (1995), is that “the need to pretend to
anonymity can have a constraining and deforming effect upon an analyst’s
clinical efforts” (Renik, 1995, p. 469). An analyst who believes that he or
she should be anonymous to the patient might not make a given interpre-
tation because of a concern that it would be too revealing. Or, the therapist
may go ahead and make a potentially revealing interpretation, but use
abstract or vague language so as to obscure the self-revelation. In this
second case, the patient can experience the analyst as ambiguous and
enigmatic rather than anonymous. This ambiguity, according to Renik
(1995), can lead to the idealization of the analyst as having privileged,
objective knowledge of the patient and perhaps of life in general. The
“anonymous” analyst becomes a mysterious individual “whose ways can-
not be known and whose authority, therefore, cannot be questioned” (Re-
nik, 1995, p. 483).

erate self-disclosure represents a heterogeneous entity. Deliberate disclosures that are

unsolicited potentially have very different implications from disclosures that come as
the response to a patient’s question. In terms of content, the deliberate disclosure of
countertransference feelings is different from the disclosure of facts. Finally, the de-
liberate disclosure of countertransference feelings or personal facts can have very
ordinary content (e.g., “I’m feeling confused” or “I’m originally from the Midwest”)
or extraordinary content (e.g., “I am sexually attracted to you” or “I have cancer”).
 440 DAVIS

Renik (1995), Singer (1977), and Greenberg (1995) have built a

persuasive case that the concept of anonymity does not accurately describe
how patients experience nondisclosing analysts. Although these authors
argue that anonymity ought to be removed from psychoanalytic theory of
technique, it is important to point out that a rejection of anonymity does
not equal an endorsement of the use of self-disclosure. Kris (1982) sug-
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gests that the analyst should, as a general rule, “keep his personal affairs
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to himself . . . not out of slavish devotion to secrecy but out of respect for
the patient’s exclusive proprietary rights in the free association method”
(p. 24). For example, in following the fundamental rule, the patient has the
right and responsibility to ask questions of the analyst as they come to
mind without necessarily having the analyst interfere with the free asso-
ciations by answering.4 For Singer (1977), the importance of rejecting the
concept of anonymity is in freeing the analyst to be authentically present
in the analysis and not hidden from the patient. This authentic presence,
however, is not necessarily promoted by self-disclosure. The key issue is
for the analyst to accept, and not shy away from, the inevitable ways that
his or her “self” is profoundly revealed in the course of doing ordinary
analytic things like making interpretations. Greenberg (1995) suggests that
true self-disclosure, like anonymity, is impossible to achieve intentionally;
it is always partial. Self-disclosures inevitably conceal as much about the
analyst as they reveal. The use of self-disclosure, according to Greenberg
(1995), is furthermore often based on the faulty assumption that analysts
are “in a privileged position to know, much less reveal, everything that
[they] think or feel” (p. 197).
In light of these critiques of anonymity, many analysts (e.g., Cooper,
1998a, 1998b; Davies, 1994; Ehrenberg, 1992; Renik, 1995) have replaced
the general rule against self-disclosure with a discussion of what kinds of
information it is useful to disclose to what kinds of patients under what
circumstances. Cooper (1998a, 1998b) has argued that it can be helpful for
the psychoanalyst to disclose his or her experience of the session, espe-
cially when it is discrepant from the patient’s experience. He suggests
replacing the term self-disclosure with “analyst disclosure” to emphasize
that what is disclosed is most accurately described as the analyst’s expe-
rience of self in the role of analyst and not the individual analyst’s self
more broadly. Renik (1995, 1999) believes that an analyst should consis-

4
Kris (1982) argues that the procedures for how questions of the analyst are to
be handled (i.e., whether the question will be answered or not and how this decision
will be made in each instance) need to be worked out in each analytic pair.
 COUNTERTRANSFERENCE TEMPTATION AND SELF-DISCLOSURE 441

tently disclose to the patient “a clear and explicit picture of the analyst’s
conscious view of his or her purposes and methods” (Renik, 1995, p. 482).
Davies (1994, 1998) and Ehrenberg (1992, 1995) discuss the use-
fulness of disclosing aspects of the analyst’s countertransference reactions
to the patient. In Ehrenberg’s (1992, 1995) view, countertransference dis-
closure covers a wide array of disclosures ranging from the analyst re-
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vealing to the patient that he or she is confused about what is occurring in

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the session to disclosing highly provocative countertransference reactions

such as negative or erotic feelings (see also Davies, 1994). Although
Davies (1994) and Ehrenberg (1995) suggest that countertransference dis-
closure can be particularly useful in dealing with treatment impasses, they
argue that its use should not be restricted to periods of impasse. They
advocate the use of countertransference disclosure as a regular aspect of
psychoanalytic technique that can be especially helpful in assisting the
analyst and patient in examining the here-and-now interaction of the ana-
lytic relationship. In Ehrenberg’s (1995) words, “the judicious use of
countertransference disclosure has the potential to facilitate a level of
analytic engagement and a level of analytic exploration with all patients
that may not be possible otherwise” (p. 227).

“Young and Eager” Therapists and Countertransference Temptations

In general, most recent articles on self-disclosure argue for its usefulness

in promoting a psychoanalytic process (e.g., Davies, 1994; Ehrenberg,
1995; Renik, 1999). Only a handful of authors continue to raise traditional
cautions about the potential problems related to the use of self-disclosure
(e.g., Abend, 1995). Far fewer articles still have focused attention, as
Freud (1912/1958) did, on the role of countertransference “temptation” in
the decision to make a self-disclosure (see also Abend, 1982). In “Rec-
ommendations to Physicians Practicing Psycho-Analysis,” Freud (1912/
1958) observed that “young and eager psycho-analysts will no doubt be
tempted [italics added] to bring their own individuality freely into the
discussion, in order to carry the patient along with them and lift him over
the barriers of his own narrow personality” (p. 117). Ferenczi (1949) also
implied that countertransference temptation was a critical issue in the
decision of whether or not to make a self-disclosure. However, in Ferenc-
zi’s (1949) view, the most problematic temptation lies not in self-
disclosure, but in the temptation to hide from patients behind the guise of
professional anonymity.
 442 DAVIS

Taking Freud (1912/1958) and Ferenczi (1949) together (see Green-

berg, 1995), there appear to be both temptations to make a self-disclosure
when it is not indicated, as well as temptations not to self-disclose when
to do so would be helpful. Freud (1912/1958) further suggests that these
temptations may be strongest for “young and eager” therapists. This raises
the question: What is it about “young and eager” psychotherapists that
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makes them especially prone to countertransference temptation related to

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the decision to make or withhold a self-disclosure?

Practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapy is very rewarding, but also
highly demanding. Cognitively, the role of therapist requires one to pro-
cess large amounts of information—the content of the patient’s associa-
tions, the underlying affects, the possible dynamic and transference mean-
ings, one’s own countertransference reactions, and so on—and to respond
to the patient in real time. Emotionally, the therapist is asked to bear
empathically the pains and disappointments of the patient and yet not ask
for a similar comfort for his or her own. The therapist is also expected to
be as aware as possible of his or her own conflicts—through treatment and
through self-analysis—so that the therapist’s blind spots do not impair the
analysis of the patient’s conflicts.
Learning to practice psychoanalytic psychotherapy can feel daunt-
ing. Gaining competence in any difficult new area can generate consid-
erable anxiety and doubt about one’s abilities. However, the psychothera-
pist in training must also contend with how much of his or her personal
and professional limitations are regularly revealed to patients and super-
visors through the inevitable mistakes a beginner makes. Sensitive super-
visors, who recognize how vulnerable the beginning therapist frequently
feels, can provide invaluable encouragement and support. However, even
with this empathic understanding, young and eager therapists can often
feel insecure about their abilities as well as personally exposed.
Perhaps the most important line of development in practicing psy-
choanalytic psychotherapy is learning to be open to patients’ intense trans-
ferences and to work nondefensively with these feelings. Some might
argue that a patient’s negative transference reactions of anger, hostility,
and disappointment are the most difficult for the beginning psychothera-
pist to handle. As hard as it is to tolerate being the object of these negative
feelings, they are at least consistent with the beginning therapist’s con-
scious and unconscious worries about his or her competence. A. O. Kris
(personal communication, n.d.; see also Kohut, 1966; Kris, 1976) has
suggested that it may be more difficult, especially at the early stages of
one’s career, to learn to welcome patients’ intense positive transference
 COUNTERTRANSFERENCE TEMPTATION AND SELF-DISCLOSURE 443

feelings of idealization, dependence, longing, and love. In Kris’s words,

the therapist must accept “being that important to the patient” (personal
communication, n.d.). It is not an uncomplicated thing for any clinician to
feel worthy of being so important to a patient, but it can be especially
challenging for therapists in training who have far less faith in their clini-
cal skill. The beginning therapist, who often feels unprepared for the
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immense challenges of practicing psychotherapy, can find it overwhelm-

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ing to have a patient put his or her life in the therapist’s hands.
Given the immense complexity of learning to practice psychoana-
lytic psychotherapy, previous generations of analytic therapists in training
were relieved to have straightforward rules, like “don’t self-disclose,” to
provide the comforting air of certainty. It is much easier to follow such a
rule than it is Aron’s (1991) open-ended statement that “the question of the
degree and nature of the analyst’s deliberate self-revelation is left open to
be resolved within the context of each unique psychoanalytic situation”
(p. 43). Some supervisors are even themselves tempted to treat self-disclosure
as an advanced issue. They encourage beginning therapists—often out of
a motivation to protect the student and the student’s patients—to keep
things simple by not using self-disclosure (Cooper, 1998c). However, to
recommend that the beginning therapist try to be anonymous threatens to
perpetuate the myth of the therapist’s nonparticipation during moments of
silence or nondisclosure and risks constraining the young and eager thera-
pist’s spontaneous and authentic involvement in the analytic enterprise.
It is unavoidable for psychotherapists in training and their supervi-
sors to grapple with “the question of the degree and nature” of the use of
self-disclosure by the beginning therapist with respect to each patient. Of
particular importance is providing assistance to the beginning therapist in
reflecting on and managing the countertransference temptations that often
influence decisions to self-disclose, as well as decisions to withhold self-
disclosures. Because of their limited experience with transference and
countertransference, and the limits of their grasp of technical options,
beginning therapists are particularly susceptible to the temptation to use
self-disclosure to impose “reality” onto the psychotherapy so as to deflect
or discourage a patient’s developing transference. Similarly, young and
eager therapists are tempted by countertransference reactions not to make
a self-disclosure so as to hide from the intensity of the relationship with
the patient behind the cover of anonymity. In either case, the temptation is
to use self-disclosure and nondisclosure, each in different circumstances,
to “minimize the rawness but also the excitement that a full encounter will
bring” (Singer, 1977, p. 188).
 444 DAVIS

In the two cases that I will present, I have tried to highlight the
temptation of the psychotherapist in training to use both self-disclosure
and non-self-disclosure each in an attempt to avoid, rather than analyze,
intense transference–countertransference feelings. As I mentioned earlier,
I have selected two cases from the beginning stages of my career. The first
case, Mr. A, was one of the first patients that I saw during graduate school.
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The second case, Mr. B, is a patient I worked with as a postdoctoral

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fellow. I have not selected these cases as examples of when or how to use
self-disclosure. Instead, I chose them to illustrate the role of countertrans-
ference temptation in the decision to make or withhold a self-disclosure,
especially as it bears on a psychotherapist in training.

Case Example of Mr. A: The Temptation to Make a Self-Disclosure

Mr. A, an African American man, was in his early 20s when I began
seeing him in weekly psychotherapy. Although it was his dream, he had
not gone to college and he had been unemployed for the past 2 years. Mr.
A grew up, and still lived, in a poor and crime-ridden neighborhood near
the university where I was attending graduate school. When he was 11
years old, his father had a schizophrenic break that, within a year, led to
the father permanently leaving the family. Tragedy struck his life again a
few years later, during his junior year of high school. At that time Mr. A,
who had been doing well in school, began having symptoms that eventu-
ally led to neurosurgery to treat a brain cyst.
At the beginning of my work with Mr. A, I had found it very difficult
to understand what he was saying to me. My supervisor thought that Mr.
A’s rambling and occasionally incoherent narrative indicated that he had
a schizophrenic spectrum disorder like his father. Undaunted, I taped
every session with Mr. A and would pore over my transcribed notes for
clues about what he was trying to tell me. This is an advantage of having
a young and eager therapist. Beginning therapists can be full of energy and
idealistic about the healing power of psychotherapy. About 3 months into
the treatment, Mr. A began speaking about his life in a much more con-
sistently comprehensible way. When I asked him about the change he told
me that he had been checking me out to make sure that I was really
interested in helping him.
The incident that I will focus on occurred 10 months into my work
with Mr. A. He had achieved his goal of beginning college and had
successfully completed his first term. The one setback in this remarkable
 COUNTERTRANSFERENCE TEMPTATION AND SELF-DISCLOSURE 445

semester was that Mr. A had dropped an algebra course midterm because
he was receiving a failing grade. He re-enrolled in the course in the
following semester and began a session by telling me that he had been
suffering from tension headaches and insomnia related to his fears about
the algebra course he had just started. Before returning to focus on his
worry about the course, Mr. A told me that he had received his report card
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from last semester and had earned a 4.0 grade point average. I congratu-
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lated him and he went on to tell me about his feeling that he had to do well
in his math course in order to feel competent. He talked about experiences
in high school with teachers and tutors who tried to teach him algebra, but
“it just didn’t sink in.” Mr. A described his dilemma this way: “I know that
I’m not stupid, but in a round about way they’re saying if you can’t do this
you are stupid.” I suggested to Mr. A that his fear about having a defective
brain—related to his brain surgery and his father’s schizophrenia—
seemed to be overlaid onto the math course. As a result he was not just
worrying about passing the class, but he was also feeling that he had to
prove that his brain was okay. Mr. A went on to talk more about how the
pressure of having to prove himself in the math class had consumed his
thoughts, was giving him headaches, and was preventing him from being
able to sleep at night.
Mr. A was clearly in a lot of distress and I felt very worried about
him. I had the fantasy of asking Mr. A to bring his math books to the
session so that I could tutor him myself. We had the following exchange
near the end of the hour. He said, “I am considering being tested for
dyslexia, but it’s a cop out. I’m working as hard as I possibly can, but I’ll
just have to work harder.” I replied, “you’re struggling hard to do some-
thing that is very difficult for you, but there’s so much added pressure
because you worry that not doing well in math means that you are stupid
or don’t think right.” He agreed with me and said, “it’s more symbolic
than it should be.” At this moment in the hour I made my self-disclosure.
I said to him, “right, there’s a distinction. Not being good at something
doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you. I once tried to learn
to play the guitar, but I had to accept that I just wasn’t very good and I
dropped it.” Fortunately, my relationship with Mr. A was strong and he
was able to let me know how misattuned this disclosure had been. He said,

but you got by algebra. Playing guitar is not part of your livelihood. My major
is education so I need to know it to teach it. I don’t know if guitar was as
important to you as algebra is to me. It gnaws at me that it beats me and I don’t
like to think of myself as giving up on things especially things that require
thought.
 446 DAVIS

In this session Mr. A had been telling me about how desperately he

needed friends, parents, and teachers to help him and how they were
failing him. Mr. A was wondering whether I could help him, or whether
I would be yet another person who would not be helpful, and who would
possibly also humiliate him. My fantasy about having Mr. A bring in his
math books reflected my own doubts about whether I could help him
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psychotherapeutically. I had more confidence, at that time, in myself as a

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math tutor than I did as a very green psychotherapist.

In this hour with Mr. A, my discomfort with accepting his transfer-
ential hopes, as well as my incomplete awareness of my countertransfer-
ential doubts, led to a “temptation” in me to use self-disclosure to pull
back from his longing and dependence rather than to stay with him in
trying to understand his feelings. The intensity of Mr. A’s distress, along
with my uncertainty about whether I could help him, stirred in me a related
feeling of helplessness. In this hour, I also felt an intensification of the
guilt that I often experienced with Mr. A. He felt that my education and
White skin entitled me to a sense of dignity and respect that he had never
known. In my self-disclosure, I succumbed to a temptation to avoid my
feelings of guilt and helplessness, as well as avoid my discomfort with the
depth of his dependence on me and his longing to be helped.
I am not suggesting with this vignette that it was a mistake to use
self-disclosure. It is possible that a self-disclosure that was based on a
better understanding of Mr. A, and of my own countertransference, would
have been helpful. The timing and content of my disclosure were both out
of step with what Mr. A was telling me. In fact, it was not much of a
disclosure at all. In keeping with Greenberg’s (1995) point that self-
disclosure always conceals some things about the therapist at the same
time as it reveals others, this disclosure primarily covered over what I was
actually feeling. Davies (1994) or Ehrenberg (1995) might argue that it
would have been more authentic, and potentially more useful to Mr. A, if
I had disclosed that I had my own anxiety about whether I would ever be
able to master the practice of psychotherapy and that I had my share of
sleepless nights worrying about it.
Given that I did not consciously grasp the nature of Mr. A’s trans-
ference feelings as well as my countertransference desire to avoid them in
this hour, I would have been better off if I had treated my yet-to-be-spoken
impulse to make a self-disclosure as a piece of data about what was going
on in this session. If I had reflected on the meaning of my temptation by
asking myself, “Why am I thinking about making a self-disclosure now?”
and if I had focused on what the content of my imagined self-disclosure
 COUNTERTRANSFERENCE TEMPTATION AND SELF-DISCLOSURE 447

was designed to do—in this case to communicate implicitly to Mr. A that

he should not want so much because it was causing me to feel too helpless,
guilty, and inadequate—I might have been able to use that information to
reorient myself in relation to his concerns. Based on such introspection I
might have opened a dialogue with Mr. A around the feelings of help-
lessness, frustration, and humiliation that came with his belief that people
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could not, or would not, help him. Looking back on this hour, it might also
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have been useful to try and examine with Mr. A how my self-disclosure
was related to what was going on in our relationship. Perhaps, at some
level, it reflected both of our fears about how much he was depending on
me and about how disappointed he would feel if I let him down.

Case Example of Mr. B: The Temptation to Withhold a Self-Disclosure

With Mr. A, I used self-disclosure to shy away from him and his powerful
transference feelings. In the case of Mr. B I will present an instance of the
countertransference temptation to withhold a self-disclosure for similar
reasons. Mr. B was a White law student in his mid-20s when he presented
for psychotherapy because of feeling intermittently depressed over the
past year. About 6 months prior to his initial visit with me, he had made
an attempt to start psychotherapy. He left this treatment, however, after
only a few weeks of meeting because he felt that the sessions had been too
“unfocused.”
Particularly of note in Mr. B’s history was his parents’ divorce when
he was 8 years old. After a “nasty custody battle,” he went to live with his
mother while his older brother stayed with the father. Mr. B was not close
to his father or his brother after the divorce. Looking back, he felt that his
mother had “poisoned” his opinion of them both. Mr. B’s mother was very
critical of the father for being a poor provider, and she did not get along
well with her eldest son who she felt was “too willful.” His father died in
an automobile accident when Mr. B was in high school. He felt very guilty
that he had not spent more time with his father in the years after the
divorce.
In our initial session, I found Mr. B’s affect difficult to follow. He
was disconnected and unfocused in a way that resembled his description
of his first treatment, and I was concerned that my work with him might
end with the same fate as this previous psychotherapy. Mr. B began our
second session by saying he had not felt like coming in because he had
been feeling “blah.” I asked him if he thought that the blah feeling might
 448 DAVIS

have been related to our first session. He replied that he had experienced
me as too “still” during our initial meeting. Mr. B’s mood lifted percep-
tibly in response to my interest in his feelings of discomfort with my
“stillness” and at my desire to help him feel more comfortable with me.
The first few weeks of my work with Mr. B continued to be char-
acterized by a difficulty connecting with him affectively. At about that
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time, Mr. B began talking in an hour about how painful a transition it had
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been for him when he started going to private school. He had been a top
student in public school, but when he transferred to private school he did
not do as well because of the greater demands and competition. We
discussed how he had lied, at his mother’s insistence, on his financial aid
application for private school. Mr. B said, “I had to pretend that my father
[who was still alive at that time] didn’t exist.” He then started talking
about how terrible it felt to be the “scholarship kid” going to a wealthy
private school. He stopped at this point and asked me excitedly if I had
gone to private school. I hesitated and, before I could reply, he said
somewhat dejectedly, “I guess you just want to hear my opinion of it.”
Looking back on this clinical moment, I see that my hesitation was
an important communication to my patient. It was an inadvertent “self-
disclosure” of the kind that Hoffman (1983) refers to. Partially I was
constrained by the belief I held at that time that self-disclosure represented
“bad” technique. Additionally, in my not responding to his excitement, I
unintentionally conveyed to Mr. B that I had some hesitance about being
the recipient of his intense longing for connection.
Initially, I withheld my answer, preferring instead “to explore” the
meaning of his question. I asked Mr. B if he knew why it had come up just
then. He said he asked me the question because he wanted to know
whether I could relate to his experience. Seeing that I was not going to
answer him right away, Mr. B associated to the shame he felt at wearing
secondhand clothes to school when his classmates dressed in clothes from
Brooks Brothers. Although I believed, at that time, I was employing the
“correct” (and most helpful) analytic technique, Mr. B’s association to the
shame of not fitting in at private school suggested that he experienced my
not answering his question primarily as a rejection.
I asked Mr. B how it would feel for me not to answer his question.
He responded by talking about how it was hard to feel entirely comfortable
because I was so completely unknown to him. He said that it was as if
there was a “Lucite barrier between us.” Mr. B said that his best friend at
law school was also a poor kid at private school and that the two of them
“bonded” around this shared experience.
 COUNTERTRANSFERENCE TEMPTATION AND SELF-DISCLOSURE 449

At this point, although I worried what my supervisor would think

when I saw him later that week, I finally decided to answer Mr. B’s
question directly. In the face of his history of loss, his lack of a strong male
presence through much of his life, his difficulty establishing a connection
with his previous therapist, and given that I would not see him again for
7 more days, I decided that doing nothing would be worse for our devel-
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oping relationship than answering him. Mr. B needed me to be more

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present with him and his description of me as being behind “Lucite” was
a powerful statement of my current inaccessibility to him. I told Mr. B that
I had gone to private school in junior high and high school, and that my
family was at the lower end of things at the school economically. Mr. B
said excitedly that it helped for him to know that. He said he realized now
that I could relate to what he had been through. He also said that it made
me seem more like a real person to him.5
As with the case of Mr. A, I do not present the case of Mr. B as an
example of the exemplary use of self-disclosure. Instead, I use this case as
a second illustration of the difficult dilemma faced by therapists in training
regarding the decision of whether or not to make a self-disclosure. Mr. B
was trying to establish a “bond” with me, but instead he found me “still,”
“unknown,” and “behind Lucite.” Summoning his courage, he reached out
to me and asked a question. I hesitated and then further delayed my
response behind “exploration.” My initial delay in answering his question
was, in part, related to my belief, at the time, in the ideal of the anonymous
therapeutic stance. However, because I did not have an interpretation to
make in response to Mr. B’s question, nonresponding necessarily took the
form of vague exploration which he understandably experienced as eva-
sive and rejecting. Also of importance was my countertransference reac-
tion. Mr. B’s “father hunger” was very intense—he had lost his own father
essentially at age 8. To complicate Mr. B’s predicament further, there was
his mother who was critical of masculine “willfulness” and who insisted
that he deny that his father (and presumably his desire for a father) existed.
He felt guilty and conflicted about desiring a connection with a father.
Although the intensity of his longing for connection was affectively pal-

5
Although a fuller account is beyond the scope of the present discussion, it is
important to point out that the content of my “honest” answer to Mr. B’s question was
a highly relevant factor in influencing the “temptations” surrounding my decision to
make a disclosure as well as his reaction to the disclosure. For example, if my “honest”
answer had been that I had been one of the rich kids at private school who had made
fun of “scholarship” kids like him, the impact of such a disclosure on this hour’s
process would obviously have been quite different.
 450 DAVIS

pable, Mr. B’s criticism of this longing, as well as his guilt that he was
burdening me with it, left him feeling lost, confused, and especially vul-
nerable to feeling rejected.
In this vignette I am illustrating how my countertransference temp-
tation to deflect Mr. B’s longing caused me to collude with his conflicts
about his longings and initially avoid his question. I am again suggesting
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that this temptation was especially strong for me as a young and eager
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therapist. At some level I felt, in response to Mr. B’s yearning, “how can
I be the transferential father? I also can feel, at times, like a boy longing
for fathering.” As with Mr. A, it would have been preferable for me to
reflect on my countertransference impulse—in this case an impulse not to
make a self-disclosure in response to his direct question. If I had examined
why I was not answering his question, I might have noticed my counter-
transference discomfort with the intensity of his desire to connect with me.
At the very least I believe I would have noticed, from this reflection, that
I was keeping my distance from a patient who had already made it clear
that the central focus of the beginning of his treatment was his difficulty
connecting. If I had done this reflecting, perhaps I would have decided to
answer his question immediately, before further delay led him to feel more
rejected and ashamed. Or, I might even have been able to use my reflec-
tion to reorient myself to Mr. B and to my responsibility to analyze what
was transpiring between us. The question in the transference–
countertransference in this hour (as expressed in his association to the
transition to private school) seemed to be: How much of himself and his
feelings did he need to deny in order to make the transition into psycho-
therapy? And, how much shame would he have to endure in the process?
When I was able to move past my initial resistance and answer Mr. B’s
question, his brightened affect and his increased associations about the
problems of connection indicated that the self-disclosure had been a help-
ful response.

Discussion

That the psychoanalyst should remain anonymous to his or her patient was
once a given of psychoanalytic theory and technique. Contemporary ana-
lytic authors (e.g., Greenberg, 1995)—writing from within a two-person
model of psychoanalytic process—have compellingly argued that it is
impossible for any analyst to be anonymous. Renik (1995) and Singer
(1977) take this line of argument further and suggest that even trying to be
 COUNTERTRANSFERENCE TEMPTATION AND SELF-DISCLOSURE 451

anonymous is problematic because it can have a substantial inhibiting

impact on analytic treatments. This rejection of anonymity recognizes that
the analyst’s disclosure of “self” is unavoidable and it has subsequently
opened up the exploration of the use of intentional self-disclosure as a
genuinely psychoanalytic intervention.
Like all other analytic interventions, intentional self-revelations are
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ideally made to further the development of the analytic process. This

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deepening of analytic process is variously described as being manifested

in enhanced freedom of associations (e.g., Kris, 1982), in intensification of
the patient’s affective experience in the hour (e.g., Fishman, 1996), and in
an increased emphasis on the transference relationship (e.g., Gill, 1982).
Also, as with any other psychoanalytic intervention, content and timing
are important factors in determining the success of self-disclosure in fur-
thering the analytic process. It is tempting to look for rules or guidelines
regarding when self-disclosures may or may not be helpful (for example,
crucial differences between the two cases presented here are that Mr. A
had an established treatment alliance while Mr. B did not, and Mr. B asked
a question which invited self-revelation while Mr. A did not). However,
whether a self-disclosure will further or hinder the development of the
treatment process is ultimately determined by the unique qualities of the
participants in the therapeutic dyad as well as where they are in the course
of treatment.
I have argued that countertransference temptation can lead to deci-
sions to make self-disclosures, as well as decisions to withhold self-
disclosures that can inhibit rather than promote the development of the
analytic process. Following Freud’s (1912/1958) lead, I have suggested
that this temptation can be strongest among psychotherapists at the
beginning stages of their psychotherapeutic careers. Specifically, the cen-
tral temptation regarding self-disclosure by beginning therapists is the
temptation to use self-disclosure, or the withholding of a self-disclosure,
each in the service of avoiding or deflecting powerful feelings of love,
hate, anger, dependence, idealization, sexual excitement, and so on, that
begin to emerge in the treatment. One of the most important lines of
development in practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapy is learning to be
open to the intense feelings that the process can evoke in patient and
therapist. It is particularly challenging to accept the hopes that patients
invest in psychotherapists, and to feel worthy of having another’s life
placed in one’s hands. To accept being that important to the patient is
especially difficult for the beginning therapist who, due to limited expe-
rience and lack of confidence in his or her therapeutic skills, can easily feel
 452 DAVIS

incapable of handling the intensity and uncertainty of the psychotherapeu-

tic relationship.
Using cases from my training, I illustrated instances in which coun-
tertransference temptations influenced my decisions to make and to with-
hold self-disclosures. This temptation is not merely a problem, however.
Like other countertransference reactions, it can be an important source of
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information about the patient and about what is occurring in the therapeu-
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tic relationship. Reflecting on this countertransference temptation, in turn,

becomes part of the data that the therapist uses to decide whether to make
a self-disclosure, whether not to make a self-disclosure, or whether to use
an alternative intervention. Learning to recognize and be informed by
one’s countertransference reactions to patients is a critical part of the
development of a psychoanalytic psychotherapist.
Although reflecting on countertransference temptations can be very
useful in the moment of contemplating a disclosure or contemplating
withholding a disclosure, it is often impossible to do. In many instances
the therapist is simply too caught up in the countertransference to become
fully aware of it, and instead enacts it. In fact, Renik (1995) argues that
some countertransference reactions must be put into action before it is
even possible to become aware of them. At other times, as Greenberg
(1995) puts it, there are “moments in analysis when there is no time to
think” and the therapist must “reflexively” (p. 199) make a decision about
what to do. Whether the decision to make a self-disclosure represents
careful reflection, enactment, or reflexive response, the ultimate impact on
the therapeutic process of this decision often only can be evaluated and
understood well after the fact. Reflecting back on “mistakes” and “deci-
sions” is another important means of learning about oneself as a therapist
and about the psychotherapeutic process occurring with the patient. The
two cases I have presented describe events that, when looked back upon,
cast important light on what was going on in me and in these two treat-
ments. Much of the understanding in psychotherapy comes after the fact
in this way as the therapist alone, in consultation, and in collaboration with
the patient struggles to understand what has transpired between them.

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