ABSTRACT
Our examination of countertransference brings me to the question with which I would like to start: what happens when the emotional reciprocity between the analyst and the patient gains the upper hand in the analytic session? Then they enter a dance of unbridled interpretation playing and pushing jouissance from one side to the other and back. From the Lacanian perspective it is a reconstruction of childhood loves and hates, which transference is supposed to evince in analysis. Whether this is to be done in a loud, symmetrical, and reciprocal way with the analyst, is another matter. Where is the subject’s unconscious knowledge in all this? In what way does an exhibition of emotional blackmail – if you don’t give me yours I don’t give you mine and thou shall not progress – contribute to knowledge in the analytic experience?
