"The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him"
About this Quote
The intent is tactical. If the analyst reveals too much personality, biography, or opinion, the patient’s attention latches onto the doctor as a person to please, resist, seduce, or impress. Freud wanted those impulses anyway, but he wanted them purified into data: transference made legible. The opacity isn’t coldness for its own sake; it’s a way to keep the patient’s psychic theater onstage instead of letting the doctor become a co-star.
Subtextually, the sentence also defends authority. The analyst’s restraint reads as neutrality, and neutrality reads as legitimacy. Yet the “like a mirror” metaphor is a little disingenuous in a Freudian context: analysts do interpret, prod, and frame. The claim of pure reflection masks the power to decide what counts as “shown,” what gets named a symptom, a wish, a defense.
Context matters. Early 20th-century medicine prized the doctor’s professional distance, and Freud was busy differentiating his method from moral counsel and friendly conversation. The austerity is part of the brand: psychoanalysis as a space where the patient meets themselves, and the clinician’s personality is deliberately kept off the record.
Quote Details
| Topic | Doctor |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Ratschläge für den Arzt bei der psychoanalytischen Behand... (Sigmund Freud, 1912)
Evidence: Der Arzt soll undurchsichtig für den Analysierten sein und wie eine Spiegelplatte nichts anderes zeigen, als was ihm gezeigt wird. (Page unknown (appears in later reprints; see notes)). Primary source is Freud’s German technical paper first published in 1912 under the title given here (commonly translated as “Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psycho-Analysis”). The widely-circulated English wording (“The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him”) is the standard translation and is typically cited from *The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud*, Vol. 12 (London: Hogarth Press, 1958), where it appears on p. 118 of that volume’s pagination (i.e., SE 12:118). ([pep-web.org](https://pep-web.org/search/document/SE.012.0109A?utm_source=openai)) I was able to verify the original German sentence via a 1922 collected-works reprint/facsimile that reproduces the line verbatim. ([freudedition.net](https://www.freudedition.net/af/werke/ratschlage-fur-den-arzt-bei-der-psychoanalytischen-behandlung/druckschrift-1?utm_source=openai)) The Freud Edition (freudedition.net) bibliographic entry indicates the English SE manifestation as 1958 and gives the SE page range for the essay (111–120), but the site itself returned fetch errors when I attempted to open the facsimile pages to extract an exact SE page image for the quote. ([freudedition.net](https://www.freudedition.net/en/werke/recommendations-physicians-practising-psycho-analysis/druckschrift?utm_source=openai)) Other candidates (1) Self-disclosure in Psychotherapy (Barry Alan Farber, 2006) compilation95.9% ... The doctor should be opaque to his patients , and like a mirror , should show them nothing but what is shown to h... |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Freud, Sigmund. (2026, February 11). The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-doctor-should-be-opaque-to-his-patients-and-21168/
Chicago Style
Freud, Sigmund. "The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him." FixQuotes. February 11, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-doctor-should-be-opaque-to-his-patients-and-21168/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him." FixQuotes, 11 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-doctor-should-be-opaque-to-his-patients-and-21168/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.
