ABSTRACT
The communicative approach makes a primary distinction between the patient's basic perceptions of an intervention context and the reactions generated by those perceptions. Each intervention of the therapist precipitates a variety of conscious thoughts and feelings on the part of the patient, as well as direct behaviours. In order to make clear the implications of the different elements of a patient's response to an intervention context, the author states directly some of what the author has already foreshadowed: the patient's primary unconscious response to an intervention context is non-transferential. Transference reactions come into play only after non-transference perceptions have been registered outside awareness. Transference is a secondary response constituted by exaggerations or distortions of the patient's initial veridical perceptions of the intervention context. The patient's first and fundamental reaction to each intervention from the therapist is perceptual.
