The authors address the transference-countertransference axis as a central dimension of psychoanalytic work and apply the concept of the analytic field to describe this area. Initially understood as a locus wherein intersecting resistances of the patient-analyst encounter are reduced by the analyst's capacity for “second-thought” interpretations, the field today connotes a meeting point of the multiple potentialities of analyst and patient and of the worlds that emerge in their encounter.

Utilizing a Bion-inspired view of the field, enriched with concepts from narratology, a series of countertransference levels can be distinguished. Distinctions are based on the modalities that the field permits and makes use of to modulate its own tensions. Transformations of the characters in the session's narratives are shown to represent transformations in the analytic field. Explorations of such links elucidate the opening and closing of a “channel” between (the patient's) projective identifications and (the analyst's) reverie.