ABSTRACT
Greenson has emphasized the importance of the initial telephone call, which heralds the start of the transference and countertransference. Each of us, patient and assessor, is at that moment working in the dark, with only our fantasies to keep us company. If the prospective patient sounds curt, even rude, our own defensive countertransference responses must be carefully monitored. One's awareness of the patient's transference and of one's own countertransference should be seen as signposts along the road to understanding the patient's unconscious, and the importance of this should not be underestimated. If a patient's ego capacities cannot be mobilized by the assessor, making links between past and present, our countertransference may lead us to feel frustrated, if not virtually useless. Usually, the assessor finds that the countertransference has moved from a feeling of frustration to one of sadness that this patient is unlikely to benefit from psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
