The Ellsberg psychoanalytic situation.

Abstract

The author proposes to explore an event that received nationwide publicity through the Watergate investigation: the burglary of the office of a Los Angeles psychoanalyst believed to be treating Dr. Daniel Ellsberg. A brief questionnaire, with an accompanying letter, was mailed to all members of the American Psychoanalytic Association. It requested voluntary information on the reaction of their patients to the aforesaid particular event. The results of the study was then evaluated as serving hopefully an indirect inquiry into psychoanalytic practice. This paper is based on an adjusted sample of 861 respondent psychoanalysts, who reported on a total of 5,074 analysands. The resultant figures indicate that a high percentage of the analysand sample was silent concerning the office break-in during the eight-week period following the national publicity given the event. Of the small percentage of analysands that did present material concerning the event, the survey found that they were the patients of only 84 analysts of the entire sample of 861. The absence of reference to the Ellsberg Affair in so many patients may have been due to (1) the fact that analysts create an analytic situation which has a basic quality of interference such that events of this kind do not get communicated, and (2), more important, the fact that analysts through some defensive need failed to take cognizance of references to the Ellsberg Affair in dreams or in the latent content of the associations of their patients. A "natural" psychoanalytic experiment has been studied, and the results are offered for consideration.