Creative aggression by Bach, George R. (George Robert), 1914-1986;Goldberg, Herb, 1937- joint author

of the role of the analyst from a book entitled Psychoanalysis and Dasein Analysis written by noted Swiss psychoanalyst Dr. Medard Boss in the early 1960s: Genuine psychotherapeutic eros, in other words, must be an otherwise never practiced selflessness, self-restraint and reverence before the patient*s existence and uniqueness. These qualities must not be shaken or perturbed by uncooperative, indifferent or hostile behavior on the part of the patient. Psychotherapeutic eros must go beyond even Christian humility in its selflessness, its modesty and its triumph over egotism. ... A genuinely mature analyst will be able to analyze his patients in the exemplary way in which a cer- TBDE "NICE" PSYCHOTHERAPIST 53 tain hermit of the Himalayas cared for the flowers of his small garden. When praised for the extraordinary beauty of that little piece of ground, he sunply remarked that he permitted the flowers to unfold into their full blossoming—not for his own sake and aesthetic pleasure, but only for the delight of his God. Patients with whom an analyst is not capable of relating in this way, to some extent at least, should better be sent to another analyst.*^ The orientation Dr. Boss demands in his book, we feel, is an extreme of what is emotionally unauthentic and unattainable. The pressure to behave this way forces the psychotherapist to behave as an image, a symbol, rather than as a real person. Professional psychological publications that have sought to describe the attributes o