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In summary, the title, Beyond Countertransference, lures the reader by implying that the author has a significant contribution to make to our understanding of the psychoanalytic process^ one that goes beyond the contemporary view of countertransference as a spectrum of therapist responses and reactions, conscious and unconscious, in interaction with the responses and reactions of the patient. Instead, it turns out that Natterson uses the earliest definition of countertransference as an obstacle to analysis as a straw man to contrast the advantages of an intersubjective view. He does this in a way that fails to make clear what advantages to the clinician accrue from his picture of intersubjectivity as contrasted with the modern understanding of transference — countertransference interaction.
In reading this book, though, I was impressed by occasionally finding in the author's thinking an important piece of ground in common with most therapists who are trained as analysts. That common ground is our hard-won and not easily sustained insight from a century of psychoanalytic work that the interactions one has with others are, to a greater or lesser degree, influenced and conditioned by earlier experiences with others. Depending on the emphasis desired, one may refer to these experiences as interactional transactional, interpersonal, or as Natterson prefers, intersubjective. Today