DISCUSSION: Dr. Jerome Sashin focused on the use of countertransference to understand the patient's dynamics. There is still controversy over whether the study of countertransference enhances our understanding of the patient in ways that are otherwise unavailable. In analysis we are able to observe the way certain patients bring psychological pressure to bear upon significant others, including actually playing out certain roles with them. He noted Joyce McDougall's model of the theater, with the analyst as the stand-in for significant people from the analysand's inner world. Winnicott referred to the psychoanalytic capacity for play, in which the psychoanalytic work progresses only through the action of two psychic players. McDougall talked of the analyst's risk of actually playing out the role. Dr. Sashin then examined the play enacted in Dr. Skolnikoff's analytic material and asked us to