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unconscious conflict in response to the' patient, originally experienced as a
major negative interference which was warned against by Freud and other
classical analysts (Annie Reich, for example), to be strictly eradicated by
self-discipline, self-analysis or further personal analysis has undergone a
metamorphosis over the years. First countertransference became something
to recognize and eliminate but also to be used for recognition of the
patient's inner world, as to what is going on in the patient that stimulated
this countertransference. More recently it has assumed a more central and
controversial position for some analysts as a direct indicator, a direct
pipeline to the patient's inner world of objects. It would appear then, over
the years, that many clinical manifestations, whose appearances were orig–
inally experienced as problems have, with better understanding of the
clinical process, become central tools in the conduct of an analysis.
Finally, the question of therapeutic action of analysis: Psychoanalysis
was conceived of as a talking cure in which the curative process was strict–
ly verbal, interpretation leading to insight, with stress laid on correct
interpretation versus incorrect or incomplete interpretation. It would make
a difference then which frame of reference would be used since each would
interpret a different content: Drive theory would interpret the conflict over
drives; object relations theory would interpret the internal drama of conflict
over opposing object relations and their necessary defensive split; develop–
mental theory would point to developmental arrests; and self psychology
would point to inadequate self-esteem, self-experience, and so on. However,
from the beginning, although frowned upon, there were always those who
advocated the simultaneous importance of the therapeutic impact of the
analytic relationship itself and introduced corresponding technical maneu–
vers accordingly-to wit Ferenczi's "indulgences;' in the 1920s in Europe,
Alexander's "corrective emotional experience" later on in America,
Kohut's empathic resonance for "transmuting internalization" in Chicago
most recently. It is, I believe, currently accepted that both interpretations
and relational aspects are necessary components of the therapeutic action of
psychoanalysis. Although this relational component is not an artificial,
assumed attitude on the part of the analyst as suggested in the above varia–
tions of the technique, but is part and parcel of the analytic situation-a
consistent, interested, reliable listener, non-judgmental, indestructible, non–
retaliating, and therefore a supportive listener, from the classical point of
view; a new experience, new object relationship, so different from the one
experienced as a child, though now a consciously artificially assumed one,
from the point of view of the object relations theorist; an accepting, mir–
roring, non-questioning, gleam in the eye, an object for temporary
identification, from the point of view of the self-psychologist; even an iden–
tifactory object on a higher level of integration for temporary use of
modeling in terms of the pursui t of the analytic goal, from the point of view
