The therapist is not neutral and not a blank slate. He is more modest and more confident, less willing or interested in discovering or being discovered. The therapist finds himself on the thin line between bringing himself to the process and making space for the patient. According to Rucker [Govrin, 2004], the interaction between the two is such that each one puts pressure on the id and the super ego. Each one of them is like a child with introverted parents. The feelings of the therapist and the patient are vulnerable to the mutual influence, and according to Ogden (from Govrin, 2004), this creates a third subjective. Something new is created between them. Breger, in my opinion, create this third dimension space. This space contains also paradox.
Hoffman (2004) is the more radical of the intersubjective theorists, positing that human beings are in tension between the two poles of meaning and death. The dialectic between them is one of destruction and construction, doubt and determination, and finally hope and despair. According to Hoffman, authenticity is central to the therapeutic relationship: giving preference to the human principle based on other codes of behavior. The therapist, as Hoffman describes, does not reveal his unknown to the patient. Rather he is present at the juncture where two people share discovery of a feeling and move from the state where the experience is not articulated and does not have a shape, unlike the situation where there is language and the experience is shaped. Hoffman suggests that the therapist may be, and should probably be, authoritative and yet human.
The client may even be hypnotized under the therapist’s influence, creating an illusion of omnificence. Along with that, however, the therapist and patient are both aware of the dialectic between spontaneity and formality. There is a framework of rules and regulations that is well-kept and discussed. At the same time, the patient is exposed, deviates from the rules and says what is in his heart. That is what happened to Yael. She could bear and carry the tension between Breger the therapist, and Breger the person. It seemed to have confused her, but she acknowledged it and she gained from it. As she said about the Breger’s self-disclosure: when she wanted to know personal things about him he allowed it and when she didn’t he respect it.
The question of Attics
In his book Rationality: From Attachment to Intersubjectivity (2000, p. 167), Stephen Mitchell proposes that we live in a psychoanalytic time where many basic assumptions of the classic model of the soul and theories about the state of analytics were found to be unacceptable. The main upheaval which left its mark was the realization that it is impossible to see analytic relationships as a sterile operating room, as Freud believed. Against Freud’s wishes, analytic relationships turn out to be much different from other human relationships. Mitchell relates to the components of human relationships without taking out the central and important concept of professional ethics.
In my opinion, ethics are not merely principles of what is allowed and what is forbidden. Ethics are first and foremost a call for a relationship, according to Epstein(2015) [an Israeli philosopher who builds on the ideas of Emmanuel Levinas (1968)]. Ethics is the interpretation of the human story connected to the human question to find not only the differences between us but also and especially what is common. Knowing the common is accepting the different types of human beings. Ethics is a place between two or more people where they can meet with the freedom to define themselves and to create themselves anew: giving our stories a meaning, recognizing the special voice and needs of the other and ourselves in front of the other. Analytic relationships can be formed along with these elements that make up professional ethics a home and not only walls.
