Why We Need to Write Openly About Our Clinical Cases

Abstract

To learn more about what is and is not effective in the psychoanalytic situation, analysts need to develop a library of detailed analytic case material. Open case writing, by not overconstraining readers, allows them enough access to the analytic couple's affective experience to persuade them of the authenticity and validity of the analyst-author's views. They are then free to rethink the material creatively on their own, to use it as they need to, and to learn from others, in order to enhance their analytic skills. Closed case writing hinders readers' creative freedom to understand and interpret, and hence to learn. To encourage analyst-authors to share their affective experiences in the analytic situation more openly, analysts need to establish a constructively collaborative attitude toward playing with clinical material. They need to take for granted that new readers, even authors themselves newly rereading their work, will discover something new. A dialectical process can then be established in which clinical authors and readers contribute to each other in an ongoing imaginative interchange.