ABSTRACT
The usual discussion of transference seems to hold that transference flows only from patient to analyst. Yet we can hardly believe that the traffic is only one way, for transference is ubiquitous in all human relationships and affects all parties. So, to begin with, we must touch on the obvious: the analyst, like the patient, has “an unconscious,” with unacknowledged needs, wishes, and fears that may, and likely will, be mobilized in the analytic situation. The involuntary participation of the analyst, as Menninger and Holzman (1973) put it, like that of the patient, may involve a variety of attitudes. Some we can understand as direct expressions of residues of the analyst's infantile experiences; others, as attitudes that may be best understood as defenses against these residues and against the resonance of them evoked by the patient's transference.
