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THE PROPOSITION THAT I WISH to present in this paper evolves rather logically from the growing body of analytic work with severely disturbed patients, and from the reflections about the nature of the therapy process which this has stimulated. There is now, within the analytic community, a durable consensus about the following basic ideas:
1the therapist, especially with borderline and psychotic patients, constantly brings his developmental knowledge and technical sensibility to bear on the intensity and even the kinds of transference phenomena in a given treatment; (Kernberg, 1975) ; (Kohut, 1971) ; (Ramzy, 1961) ; (Searles, 1961a), (1961b)
2the therapist utilizes constructively (that is, apprehends, modulates, analyzes, and in some way informs the treatment about) his countertransference reactions to the patient; (Greenson, 1974) ; (Kernberg, 1975) ; (Feiner, 1977 and many others), even as,
3the patient unconsciously needs to stimulate countertransference reactions in the therapist—for purposes including defense, the communication of preverbal or preconceptual experience, of a real or fantasied nature, (Khan, 1963, and others) ; or the integration within the therapist-parent of that which the original parent had to dissociate (Searles, 1959), (1961b).
This paper extends this train of thought slightly, and humbly addresses subtle degrees of countertransference and the necessary preliminaries to an analytic focus on them. It is my hypothesis that the patient notices increments of countertransference feeling, frequently prior to the therapist reaching this awareness; and in one way or another reflects this back to the therapist. In doing so, he paves the way, not