ABSTRACT
The reader will probably already have thought about the role that projection and introjection may play in the paradoxical system or, more precisely, the mechanisms of projective identification and, on the analyst's part, particularly, introjective identification. The intervention of these mechanisms in the countertransference has been widely discussed. Michel Neyraut, for instance, readily recognises that the countertransference—like the transference—in some ways resembles animistic thinking, which is partly identified with a projection of the unconscious. In examining the countertransference, one often begins by locating the question in relation to the various interpretations of the concept. One would thus be tempted to say that the analyst is avoiding the situation, which amounts to a countertransference manifestation in the narrowest sense of the term. This supposition is corroborated when the fantasy explicitly concerns the patient, and when, in addition, it has more or less regressive features.
