Nina Coltart, in expressing some of her own doubts about psychoanalytic training, noted that "Neville Symington..is of the opinion that a long personal analysis, which we all have as part of our training, leaves the narcissism stronger, and the ego weaker, than they were at the beginning" [REF].
Symington had from early on emphasised the importance of the analyst's spontaneity - what he called "the analyst's act of freedom as agent of therapeutic change"[REF] - something which may be linked to his existential viewpoint on narcissism [REF].