Editors' Introduction

It was from Clark University in 1909 that Sigmund Freud launched psychoanalysis in America. Freud's ideas were controversial, revolutionary, and ultimately to have a profound and enduring impact on how the development and functioning of the mind was to be understood and its pathology treated. Among Freud' most important discoveries was that of the transference process and the significance of the analyst's reactions to the patient as those reactions operate to hinder or faciliate analytic treatment. Since freud's time we have come to known much about countertransference, that is, the myriad responses which are stimulated within the analyst as a result of the analyst's presence to and interaction with the patient. We have also come to know that in the treatment of the more serious mental disorders, such as the borderline and narcissistanc conditions, the countertrsnsference process is highly complicated, emotionally and intellectually challenging, and often hazardous for both participants. Yet without recognition and constructive utilization of countertransference phenomena effective treatment cannot take place.

While we have learned much, many questions remain. To what extent, for example, must the analyst become a containeer for the patient's projections, that is, to what extent is it necessary in the analytic hour for the analyst to become the patient in order to under stand the patient's expereience. How exactly does this process take place? What is it about the process which is curative? What are the difficulties? To what extent does the analyst actively facilitate the process versus waiting for it to occur? How is the countertransference in the treatment of borderline different from that of narcissisic personalities/