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Development of a self-analytic function has historically been a goal of psychoanalysis. This article draws on interviews with former analysands to examine ways in which self-exploration continued after analysis. Former analysands who did not report ongoing self-exploration had not necessarily failed to benefit from analysis, nor had they not continued to benefit and grow after analysis ended. The author reflects on different ways of assimilating the analytic process and the analytic relationship, and self-analysis as a criterion by which to judge the success of analytic outcome is reconsidered.

Patients’ reading of their psychoanalysts’ papers about them as a vehicle for psychoanalytic work is a relatively new phenomenon in the field. Over the past five years, reports of analysts’ employment of their writing in this fashion have begun to appear in the analytic literature. This paper presents clinical illustrations of this specific use of analysts’ writing. These illustrations were drawn from interviews with analysts who published clinical articles inPsychoanalytic Dialogues between 1995 and 2003. The author considers some of the clinical and scientific implications of this use of papers written for publication.