ABSTRACT
The study of countertransference experience as potentially useful data logically follows from participant observation as a psychoanalytic model. In the interpersonal model, participant observation, the study of countertransference is inherent in the system. Parenthetically, though Sullivan developed participant observation model, he personally avoided examination of the transference-countertransference interaction in the here and now. Interpersonal psychoanalysis studies the intrapsychic as it is manifested in the analytic dyad while classical psychoanalysis tries to isolate and study the individual in vacuo. Today, in many orientations, including the classical Freudian, the analysis of mutual enactments has become the central ingredient of therapeutic action. More specifically, Freud never viewed psychoanalysis as a mutual relationship. The notion of mutuality is inherent in the participant observation model as well as in conceiving of countertransference experience as inevitable and potentially useful. The nature of the traditional classical model is such that the patient's observations about the analyst are less likely to be viewed as plausible.
