The concept of countertransference assumes different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. And yet it is an essential concept whose absence would have important theoretical and practical consequences.

At the risk of increasing the psychoanalytic Babel, I propose the concept of the countertransferential position which, in my view, allows a better understanding of the multiple determinations which impinge upon the analyst during the session. In a brief clinical example, I examine a 'countertransferential symptom' and the analyst's function of 'listening to listening'.