The authors propose to amend the classical psychoanalytic view of the transference neurosis as a product of the patient's own mental life. Their earlier studies of countertransference phenomena lead them to suggest instead that the transference neurosis of a particular patient develops in a reciprocal relationship to the countertransference of the psychoanalyst. They illustrate their thesis with a case which threatened to fail until they were able to elucidate, through analysis of the dreams of both patient and analyst, the patient's compulsion to satisfy the analyst's own need for a selfobject to maintain his self-esteem. When they worked through this mutual "transference-countertransference neurosis," the patient was able to continue treatment effectively.