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Joseph Natterson has created a volume on psychoanalysis that is refreshingly straightforward and free of jargon. In Beyond Countertransference he announces his deceivingly simple premise on the first page of the preface and remains true to it throughout the book: “My thesis is that the subjective life of the therapist is coequal to that of the patient in creating the therapeutic transaction” (p. vii).
Riding the current tide in psychoanalysis that seeks to redefine the analytic situation as not only intrapsychic but also interpersonal, Natterson is eloquent in his intuitive grasp of the realities that impinge on any human relationship.
All human two-person transactions share fundamental meaning: each party attempts to influence the other with his or her view of the universe to persuade the other of the rightness of his or her view. This basic premise enables us to realize that the value-neutral therapist is a fictive assumption and that this basic power orientation of dyadic relationships makes it natural for moral influences invariably to be significant components of therapists' activity. (p. 28)
He restates his stance on the therapist's subjectivity through his entire book, but this repetition serves his purpose of examining the therapeutic relationship from different angles while maintaining his singularly important focus.
Natterson eschews the term “countertransference” stating that it is an outdated concept that “ignores the primary emotional involvement of the analyst” (p. 43). For similar reasons, he criticizes Stolorow and associates' views of intersubjectivity for being too narrow in focus, for “limiting their interest in intersubjectivity to