This will be a predominantly clinical presentation. It involves an apparently accidental episode in which there was an unconscious intersection between two patients. My aim will be to show how transference from one case may affect transference in another, a phenomenon that I call “transference before transference”.

I hope this idea will serve as a tool for understanding the unconscious work that takes place in the clinical situation. In this example, the analyst finds himself caught up in an enactment involving two patients, in which he becomes the medium of what happens. Afterwards, what was an unexpected, unpredictable event finds meaning - “Nachtraeglichkeit” - allowing the analyst to regain his analytic position, now with additional understanding of the mutual relationship between the two cases, and of the analyst's way of relating to them - in other words, his countertransference.

This presentation relates to a general topic that is, in my view, underestimated in psychoanalytic literature1, i.e., the transition from one patient to another, and what lies in between.