ABSTRACT
In focusing on the initial engagement in an analytic process, Dennis Shelby’s presentation beautifully and evocatively illustrates an analytic process. Shelby wisely avoided getting too caught up with interpreting the erotized transference and instead simply let it be there and responded to the pleas within it, in order to gain access to the underlying depletion, anxiety, and depression. As the patient’s needs were met by the increasing frequency of sessions and by Shelby’s transference availability, the defensive sexualized transference waned. S. C. Aughan and S. P. Roose have questioned the usefulness of the concept: “By suggesting that match exists as a reality outside the domain of transference and countertransference, analysts may overlook the importance of psychoanalytic technique in creating a sense of match”. In the large center of average expectable needs of the patient and average expectable capacities and talents of the analyst, most dyadic matches seem to work.
