ABSTRACT
With the recognition of the ubiquity of interaction, how is this changed? What happened first was that it was recognized that the analyst did respond, but it was believed that this response could be solely internal and need not appear in an interaction with the analysand (Heimann, 1950). A good deal of emphasis was placed on how the analyst's awareness of his response could give him vital clues as to what the patient was attempting to enact with him. A frequent formulation was that, just as transference had initially been consid, ered an obstacle to analysis and then came to be seen as an indispens,
able instrument of analysis (as in the Bible: "the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone"), so too countertrans~ ference, once considered an obstacle to analysis, could now be seen as an indispensable instrument. A great danger, of course, is that the analyst, in regarding his feelings as necessarily "put into him" by the analysand, would fail to recognize the contribution from his own personality. This view is in fact a variant of the blank~screen concep~ tion of the analyst's role.
