Analysts' narcissistic problems—their need to use the analysand to shore up their self-esteem and maintain an illusory grandiosity—negatively affect the analytic process. The analyst may turn the adoring analysand into an idealized transference object. Concomitantly, the analyst may be unable to accept the loss of individuality produced by the analysand's demanding only to be mirrored. In both situations, analysts defensively impose a role on the analysand, rather than opening themselves up in a role-responsive manner. Along these same lines, analysts may try to duplicate themselves through the analysand, or may turn the analysand into an idealized sexual partner with attributes they would like to appropriate for themselves. The analyst's unconscious envy, revenge, and acts of thievery embedded in these countertransference dynamics may cast a persecutory shadow on the treatment. Groen compares generative empathy, in which the identification with the analysand i temporary and a sense of separateness is always maintained, with pseudoempathy, which involves a protracted merging and a "theft of emotions."