ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ways in which the neglected element of the analyst's personality affects the course of treatment. It determines what the analyst selects for interpretation, what he regards as pathological, and at what point the reactions that help him to understand his patients may turn into a countertransference which becomes an impediment. Psychoanalysts have long emphasized the importance of "the therapeutic alliance"—that is, the alliance of the ego of the patient with the ego of the psychoanalyst, in contradistinction to the regressive dependency stimulated by the transference. The concept of the therapeutic alliance by its name implies the cooperation of two individuals who can each preserve a relative autonomy of the ego in its analytic function. The process of analysis used to be conceptualized as the working through of the resistances.
