ABSTRACT
One of the most vexing, enduring, and controversial issues in the history of psychoanalysis has been the question of the role of the analyst’s personal self, personal agency, and personal influence as an individual on the treatment process, and on the evolution and shaping of the patient’s post-analytic self. Looked at from the point of view of agency, Franco Borgogno’s insistence on the analyst experiencing the patient as Borgogno feels he experiences her, as if he caught her “illness”, and on the necessity of the patient witnessing this process, takes on greater clarity. To describe the re-creation of the experience of agency in analytic treatment by itself elides the question of the specific individual with whom the patient is experiencing some impact and some reciprocal participation. The chapter focuses on the communication errors that pervaded analysts' countertransference, as it was invaded by parents who were internally depressed and/or persecuting, distracted, and abandoning.
