From Jeff Kottler's "On being a therapist"
I wonder is Freud's admonishment to remain detached in the therapeutic relationship was intended less to promote the client's transference than to preserve the emotional safety of the clinician. The experience of any practitioner would attest to the emotional as well as the intellectual strains of living constancly with clients' crises, confusion, and intense suffering. We sit in a sacred vault, completely isolated from the rest of the world and all other intrusions, accompanied only by those who have lost hope, who live with excruciating agony, and who sometimes try to make others' lives as miserable as their own. Even with the best defenses and clinical detachment, we are still sometimes polluted by this pain.
-Kottler
