The initial phase of Rita's analysis will be described. She was a successful businesswoman in her midthirties who stirred up in me one of the most challenging countertransferential and technical problems in my career. During the first three years of her intense analysis, Rita reported no dramatic current event; psychic change of a very gradual nature occurred, while overall there was much commotion, and therein lies the clinical tale.

I conceive of countertransference not in the ego psychological restricted sense, but rather in the totalistic sense as covering all the conscious and unconscious responses of the analyst to the patient. It is hard to underestimate the clinical advance that has led to counter-transference being accepted as an invaluable source of information, especially with more disturbed patients. With more integrated patients, however, countertransferential scrutiny is much less veridically