ABSTRACT
This chapter explores these two subjects: the theoretic range of possible ways in which different analysts might respond to a given patient as a function of their way of being, and how these varied responses help determine the way in which the transference ultimately gets expressed. It discusses the trends in certain quarters to overvalue countertransference enactments per se – arguably distinguishable from more contained and considers transference reactions – as the preeminent clinical tool without which psychoanalytically facilitated psychic change is less likely to occur. The psychoanalyst's way of being – his personality, temperament, characteristic style of relating to others, unresolved transferences, and the like – helps determine his response to, and his clinical interventions with, a given patient. The analysand scans the data emanating from the analyst, highlighting and overemphasizing the salient behaviors most consistent with what he anticipates finding.
