On Destructive Self-Criticism in Psychoanalysts

The article discusses devaluating self-assessment on the part of psychoanalysts. It is associated with guilt feelings and fears of failure and is described here as the expression of a destructive analytic super-ego. Tormenting self-criticism of this kind may set in when there is a risk of analysts (or indeed therapists of all psychotherapeutic persuasions) encounter feelings in their patients that they experience as overwhelming and allow these to maneuver them into an intolerable state of helplessness. Self-criticism then assures the avoidance of this feared experience. Ultimately, the destructive analytic super-ego is the result of a regression in the analyst occasioned by intersubjective experience of the >> uncanny << unconscious.