Community psychiatry has brought together in new situations various community groups and individuals, and the psychiatrist. Certain aspects of the interchange are often hard to understand and impede productivity. An attempt is made here to clarify some of these problems in terms of transference, the community's unreal expectations of the community psychiatry, and countertransference, the reactive self-defensive stance of the psychiatrist. Astute self-awareness is emphasized as a prerequisite for understanding and working with these phenomena. The author underscores, I believe correctly, that this type of awareness can only be obtained by training in individual psychotherapy and personal analysis. He suggests, in fact, that a continuing practice of psychotherapy may be 'vital' for anticipating and working with transference and countertransference phenomena in community psychiatry.