ABSTRACT
Countertransference has become a legitimate lens through which analysts monitor, explore, and analyze their patients' dynamics. Whether viewed as the container of disavowed wishes or as part of a co-created unconscious dance, analysts of all ilk now consider countertransference a crucial part of the clinical process. This chapter describes the metaphor of a bicycle wheel with multiple spokes, requiring periodic re-balancing or 'truing' to reset the delicate, counterbalanced tension among the spokes. It discusses female sexual boundary transgressors; it is striking how often the erotic countertransference involves an over-identification with a female patient. The chapter also discusses the development of expanded self-experience, including those that may derive meaning from gendered attributes, same gender relations may indicate an expansive gendered multiplicity in which anatomical sameness is no longer meaningful. In the context of psychoanalysis, multiplicity is irreducible; each spoke needs to be in balanced tension with the others.
