ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief overview of the development of the concepts of transference, countertransference and projective identification. These phenomena, initially considered negative for the analytic process, have become indispensable movements that involve analyst and patient. While Horacio Etchegoyen is careful to show the different voices on the psychoanalytic scene, his perspective tends to see an opposition between the propelling factors of the analysis and the vicissitudes of the analytic process. He presents a comprehensive historical review of the concepts of acting out, negative therapeutic reaction, reversible perspective and impasse, each of which is referred to in terms of their historical aspects. He describes the impasse as a dangerous arrest of the analytic process that tends to be self-perpetuating; it originates in the psychopathology of the patient and involves the analyst's countertransference. Compared to the concept of countertransference, the analyst's transference and projective countertransference, enactment specifically denotes an interactive situation.
