Challenges of Honesty

The analytic method builds on honesty, specifically in the moment-to-moment events of the micro-process. Ferenczi was a researcher who experimented with the limits (including the limits of honesty) of the method to its extremes. Honesty is a moral virtue, and from that perspective all events and phenomena of the moment have an ethical aspect. Self-analysis—a prerequisite and an important component of the analytic stance—puts on trial the analyst’s capacity and willingness to be honest. This paper examines these ethical aspects in the micro-process and the unavoidable dilemmas connected with it. The important settings where self-analysis is used are: being in analysis, conducting analysis and in supervision. The limits of honesty in these settings are also discussed. Recently, case discussion groups have been playing an increasingly important role in analytic conferences and also in training. The risks and limits of honesty in case discussion groups deserve to be studied.