The Analyst's Vulnerability Quotes

“Rather than seeking to have no needs or desires, we would benefit from expecting to have them and working to bring those needs into awareness.”
― Karen J. Maroda, The Analyst’s Vulnerability: Impact on Theory and Practice

“A theory of technique cast in terms of the analyst's behavior is an effort to make the analyst's character disappear. If it did so, we could teach analysis by teaching technique. But it does not work that way. A good analyst does not try to be someone else; he or she tries to use his or her strengths, receptivity, even the willingness to be wrong or blind or deaf at times, to good advantage. (p. 439, emphasis added)”
― Karen J. Maroda, The Analyst’s Vulnerability: Impact on Theory and Practice

“At some level, they understand that they will necessarily play out their own early childhood dramas, as their patients play out theirs, and fear that adoption of technical guidelines will prevent them from doing so.”
― Karen J. Maroda, The Analyst’s Vulnerability: Impact on Theory and Practice

“think that therapists of all persuasions have an aversion to expressing anger toward their patients or even feeling it, because it stimulates this irrational fear of not only failing to soothe but also to harm. This is the conundrum that we need to break free from. Accepting our inevitable ambivalence toward both the work itself (Kravis, 2013), and often toward our patients as individuals, could provide the necessary momentum to advance both our theoretical formulations and our clinical interventions. Even more important is the acceptance that we are not without memory or desire. As poetic and appealing as Bion's famous line is, I think it is not a realistic approach to doing treatment. I appreciate that his prescription was meant to encourage receptivity rather than deny our personal biases and needs. Nonetheless, his words are often taken more literally, denying the considerable”
― Karen J. Maroda, The Analyst’s Vulnerability: Impact on Theory and Practice

“can be seen as a reaction formation—an irrational defense against our own guilt and anger about having precociously surrendered our own well-being (Miller, 1997).”
― Karen J. Maroda, The Analyst’s Vulnerability: Impact on Theory and Practice