To our minds, Ted Jacobs's unique contribution to the theory of technique is twofold. First, he reminds us that countertransference is inevitable and ubiquitous, always defying our efforts to transcend with any permanence its constant impact on, and infusion into, the analytic relationship. Second, he shows us how the analyst's use of his or her self, that is, the attention to one's own subjective experience in genetic depth, aids this nonetheless endless endeavor.

The creative and fluctuating tension between intimacy and boundaries in the therapeutic relationship that has been present throughout the history of psychoanalysis owes much of its force to the analyst's countertransference participation. Beginning with Breuer, the intimacy that arose between himself and his patient, Anna O, while facilitative of the treatment, was also threatening to that treatment because his countertransference challenged the conventional erotic boundary