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The analyst's value systems and “unconscious ideology” inevitably influence his/her perceptions of the patient and the analytic process. Three popular yet erroneous assumptions impede analysts' self-awareness of the impact of their unconscious ideology: 1) the analyst as passive nonjudgmental recorder of external stimuli; 2) the analyst as listener only to the patient (and not also to his/her own associations); and 3) the analyst as a more valid judge of reality. The analytic participants are enmeshed in dyadic interaction, and analytic process cannot be considered as emanating from two separate autonomous individuals. Every analyst filters psychoanalytic theories through his/her personal lens, motivated by a primal need to resolve his/her conflicts and gain self-understanding: the paper emphasizes the importance of constant self-scrutiny for effective clinical functioning. Case assessment, especially that of candidates, must focus on the intersubjective nature of the analytic pair, rather than on the prospective patient as an independent entity. Idealization of one's theory and personal analysis leads to authoritarian attitudes that spawn difficulties in empathically identifying