ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the concepts of actualization and role-responsiveness, together with the idea of the "free-floating responsiveness" of the analyst in the analytic situation. Anna Freud first saw countertransference as referring to the analyst's blind spots that presented an obstacle to the analysis. From the beginning, countertransference was consistently seen as an obstruction to the freedom of the analyst's understanding of the patient. The first explicit statement of the positive value of countertransference was made by P. Heimann. Heimann's contribution was to show clearly that the reaction of the analyst may usefully be the first clue to what is going on in the patient. The interaction between the patient and the analyst is in large part determined by what can be called the intrapsychic role-relationship that each party tries to impose on the other. One aspect of a role-relationship can be appropriate to the task in hand—that is, to the work of analysis.
