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The psychoanalytic method is applied clinically by means of the establishment of an external framework of rules and of two basic rules, free association for the analysand and evenly suspended attention for the analyst. The latter provides for associative activity on the part of the analyst while listening to the patient's communications; this is then a twofold kind of listening, rendered complex by the many different topographical and structural levels on which it takes place and by the emerging transference and countertransference dynamics.
In particular, the interweaving of the rule of evenly suspended attention as understood in this way, on the one hand, with the concept and use of the countertransference, on the other, raises a number of thorny issues in the psychoanalyst's clinical activity that are relevant at all times (Balsamo, 2011; Semi, 2011) and are necessarily reflected in the development of theory.
The aim of this contribution is to cast light on some fundamental aspects of this problem complex and to indicate some possible ways of addressing the issues arising, especially by extending the applicability of the psychoanalytic method. At the same time, it must of course be borne in mind that, when we write about the psychoanalyst, his trade, science and concerns, including those thereby induced on the personal and group levels, our principal aim as psychoanalysts is, after all, to understand our individual patient and the human race in general. However, precisely because this paper relates primarily to analysts, I felt it particularly necessary to begin by considering the relevant concepts, how they came into being, how and when they were transformed and who transformed them, and whether or not - and on what level of thought - they can be formalized in at least conventional definitions, so that the meaning I assign here to certain words is also perfectly clear.1
As is evident from the literature on the subject, both the psychoanalytic method of free associa