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IHAVE BEEN READING AND THINKING about the use of the self in the treatment situation for some time now. The question I want to address myself to has, I believe, important implications for the theory of technique in psychoanalysis. One way I can formulate this question is: What processes can give us the feeling that we know something about the patient and about ourselves?
I will first present a brief historical view of a body of writing dealing with the therapist's emotional reactions towards the patient. I will then address myself to the question I have posed, particularly as it affects the gathering of knowledge in the analytic process, approaching it from three points of view. First, I will present my view of countertransference and its use in treatment. Here the focus will be on the therapist's attitude toward his own feelings. Secondly, I will deal with the technical issue relating to anonymity and neutrality in structuring the analytic process, and their importance in facilitating analytic objectivity. It is my contention that without that structuring and objectivity, the indiscriminate use of countertransference material becomes reminiscent of the dangers of "wild analysis." Finally, I will discuss greed. Greed is a feeling with which we are all more or less familiar, and one which tends to be repressed because it is unacceptable in our culture. It will serve as an example of an emotional reaction that, when unconscious or repressed, may spark defenses which may interfere with the normal need to know in the analytic process.
Although Freud defined the term countertransference in 1910, his writings contain only two explicit references to it, and subsequently