Confidentiality and the practice of psychoanalysis

Abstract

Confidentiality, also called professional secret, resides at the core, in the very essence, of the analytic process. The analyst’s offer of confidentiality to his analysand is supported and sustains the analyst’s capacity to work in otherness and with rêverie. Without these capacities, the exploration of the unconscious is not possible and the analytic process does not start, or is halted. Another kind of help appears, but that kind of help is not analysis. The assumption that the analyst is capable of fulfilling his offer of confidence and of listening attentively, without any value judgement, are primary elements that will help the patient to talk freely and sincerely.
Those conditions offered by the analyst will help the patient to overcome resistance and to gradually become an analysand. The question I will address in this paper is the following: why does an intelligent and capable analyst, who has been properly trained, betray the offer of confidentiality, which he has sincerely offered to his analysand?