“The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.”

“[The patient] would like to reverse the situation, and finds the analysis of the doctor more interesting than his own. The resolution of the transference, too – one of the main tasks of the treatment – is made more difficult by an intimate attitude on the doctor’s part [. . .]. I have no hesitation, therefore, in condemning this kind of technique as incorrect. The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.”

― Sigmund Freud, Papers on Technique, Recommendations to Physicians Practicing Psychoanalysis