ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the patient–analyst couple found many different ways to deal with the intense transference and countertransference field. It suggests that recommendation for psychoanalysis should be thought of in terms of a specific, creative, but unpredictable match between patient, analyst and setting, while insisting that this kind of transformational process has value in its own right. In the psychoanalytic community, there can be a misunderstanding of 'neutrality' as meaning that 'the analyst is not there as a person'. Subjective involvement is essential in psychoanalysis, and 'objectivity' is achieved through triangulation, through a third-person perspective on one's first-person experience. The pleasure of the uniquely profound encounter with another person made possible by psychoanalysis, and the pleasure of working well with the psychoanalytic method, are inseparable and necessary aspects of psychoanalytic work. Only one factor seems to stand out: that is the importance of the analyst's ability to maintain his/her analytic functioning and striving to open psychoanalytic space.
