ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis from its inception has been biased towards theory, metapsychology, presumably the font of the mutative therapeutic action. Regardless of theoretical doctrines, all analysts are struck by two oddly autonomous parameters of observation: first, the flow of consciousness as it is evidenced in the patient's narrative—the unconscious associations, the "red line" of coherence that runs through the ramblings of a session—and second, the transference enactment, the way analyst and patient behave with each other in the course of the inquiry. Transference is far more enigmatic, indeed uncanny, than one might suspect, not simply a form of resistance to change as the Freudians would have it, but rather some mysterious, inherent, correlate of the inquiry—inherent, inasmuch as it may be a natural aspect of cognitive process, not an artifact of anxiety or defense. The therapist and patient engage in a verbal inquiry that may be free-associative or may be of a more detailed nature.
