Beyond the inevitability of countertransference feelings is the question of countertransference enactments. From a two-person, participant-observer or observing-participant perspective, enactments are inevitable. The analyst becomes influenced by the patient (and influences the patient as well) and enmeshed in the patient's internalized interpersonal configurations. Analysis works not by avoiding such action but by analyzing from within the interactional system. Analysts who are different from one another become engaged in different ways, since the person of the analyst is a significant variable. This article, using case examples, explores two analyst-related variables, age and family configuration, to expand the examination of countertransference enactments and some effects on the analytic process.
Clinton and the Empty Self
(1994)
The analyst's countertransference feelings of love, particularly sexual love, have been subject to minimal examination in the literature. In this era of expanding psychoanalytical models, it appears that some theories of therapeutic action lend themselves more to addressing such themes than do others. There is always considerable overlap among psychoanalytic models, although there are nonetheless some clear differences in the way countertransference affect is experienced, filtered, and utilized.