ABSTRACT
Countertransference theory serves an increasingly important function in the therapeutic community, as it allows the psychoanalyst to talk about his own emotional reality, mental processes, and self states as they exist in his work with patients. Freud led the way in The Interpretation of Dreams when he spoke about himself in what we refer to as his self analysis. Unfortunately, though, this very important part of the psychoanalytical situation – the self-analytical element – has been fixed as an historical figuration of Freud’s. Occasional references have been made in the literature since Freud about the necessity for practising analysts to continue with a self analysis, but the analytic community has made comparatively little effort to evolve and use that voice that Freud established in his writings – a voice that speaks of the person’s experience as both subject and object. There are some notable exceptions.
