In this paper I am tracing the history of countertransference and how it has informed the current debate about self-disclosure as a pivotal instrument of analytic work. Now that the analyst's “subjective factor” has been understood as a central influence on the analysand and as a vital source of information about the analysand's intrapsychic life, I argue that certain currents in the relational school of psychoanalysis confuse the analyst's subjectivity with his personality. While becoming more “real” with a patient may enliven a stale analytic dialogue, it ought not be confused with, or take the place of, an analysis of unconscious desires and phantasies. I claim that a two-person psychology can exist only within a tripartite structure in which the analyst does not lose sight of his complex function of being the carrier, observer, and conveyor of the unconscious currents holding both participants in check.