You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Mr. Zamfirescu's work references an important debate, related firstly to countertransference as a consciously controlled reaction to the patient's transference, and secondly, to countertransference as a profoundly subconscious phenomenon, which engages the therapist, but only après-coup, as the French have it. And here follow a myriad of questions which could give further meaning to this discussion.
Still, I will only discuss the issues Mr. Zamfirescu's paper suggests, namely: how the couple therapist-patient looks like in the analytic treatment based on frustration/ gratification, the consequences the closed model of the mind has for the patient, whether enactment is an amendable mistake or an inevitable consequence of the subconscious interaction between the two actants and how a psychoanalytically healing attitude can be constructed within the context of contemporary psychoanalysis.
The first issue is related to the model of the mind proposed in classical psychoanalysis and the consequences of this model for what therapeutic action really means.
For classical psychoanalysis, the human mind was a closed energetic system, driven by biological pulsations which demanded satisfaction, release. Within the mind, these pulsations, which sought gratification and were controlled or channeled towards release or defending the ego, played