ABSTRACT
In general, the interviews with the analysts provided the most indepth material for this project. In these more elaborated, personal communications it became possible to appreciate how patients affected their analysts. In this chapter, I offer illustrations of four different ways analysts describe and think about their self-discoveries. These examples are provided to convey differences in style and approach. The first analyst describes a gradual increase in self-awareness that accrues over time and is not related to any specific patient. The second analyst describes experiential transformations that emerge primarily from interactions with patients. The third example illustrates an analyst's using the work with several patients for first discovering and then exploring different aspects of a personal issue. The fourth analyst describes work with patients that leads to a gradual increase of his awareness around a defended area and culminates in a breakthrough of an unconscious impulse in the context of a countertransference response. The specific contents and psychological changes in the analyst are not the focus of this chapter. Illustrations that elaborate the analysts' understanding and changes are provided in the second half of the book.
