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PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY AND training encourage us to notice and utilize almost everything which transpires in the interpersonal field. Perhaps everything which occurs does affect the process. Nonetheless, we recognize only some and analyze even fewer of the interactions which take place. Discordant interchanges, repetitive patterns, and behaviors which evoke powerful responses in analyst or patient are at the center of our daily work. However, an array of communications and internal responses remain outside the focus of our attention and inquiry.
The quality of each analytic exchange is shaped by such factors as body posture, tone of voice, rhythm of speech, and choice of words (Bucci, 1985) ; (Dahl, 1978). Patient and analyst continually make fine adjustments to each other. These adjustments ebb and flow with the material. They fluctuate between foreground and background (Lichtenberg, 1983). Sometimes they are the articulated focus of the analysis: at other times, they go by unnoted but continue to influence the process.
In my view variations in psychological posture and style of expression involve a process of mutual accommodation on the part of analyst and patient. When patient and analyst join in the therapeutic venture each brings characteristic ways of relating to another. Each also brings a range of personal feelings, needs, wishes and fantasies including those which are directly associated with the