ABSTRACT
For so many of our patients who are not readily able to make therapeutic use of us, we need to become intimately aware of the effect they are creating in us and to sort out the countertransference affect they arouse as a precondition for offering a new object experience. Often, we must first become aware of those reactions that interfere with us becoming the object they need. What I finally came to disclose or learn that I have already disclosed is news that came from the resulting juxtapositional effects of our two selves upon each other. For many patients, the needs they have repressed and the way they have internalized their transactions with earlier caretakers remained in inaccessible 155form. What I believe we can give voice to as an optimal response is a usable disclosure that comes, in part, from my own self experience as activated by the intersubjective relating with what Bollas (1987) refers to as the “unthought known” and the unexpressed need of the patient.
When things are working their best, we could say that we have formed together a fine tapestry, which I get to speak about first, conveying my subjective sense of the impression it had upon me and even to confer my interpretation of its meaning. But I must remain aware that the usable process is a creative synthesis, and I am by no means the sole or even original weaver of the fabric.
