October 20, 2009
MarkBernstein.org
 
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Some issues

The wikipedia page on countertransference is marked with a template:

This article or section has multiple issues.

My particular issue is whether countertransference has a hyphen, on which wikipedia is silent.

I wanted to know this because I was just rereading E. B. White’s “Second Tree From The Corner” while waiting for in my doctor’s office for my annual physical. In this classic piece, a man is pitying his psychiatrist. “He stepped into the street, turned west toward Madison, and thought of the doctor all alone there, after hours, in that desolate hole — a man who worked longer hours than his secretary.”

Isn’t that a sign of the times? Nobody has a secretary any more, of course, but surely, if you do, you work longer hours than your secretary. Secretarial work is proverbially 9 to 5. I suppose there was a time when professionals came late and knocked off early, but those ancient times have vanished save for this dim literary trace.