PANY 321st Scientific Meeting
Monday, December 12, 2005, 8:15 pm
Einhorn Auditorium, Lenox Hill Hospital, 131 E. 76th Street, NYC

The Analyst’s Countertransference In Defense Enactments
Fred Busch, PhD*
Training and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Institute of New England, East; and Faculty Member, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis

Discussant: Theodore J. Jacobs, MD

A clinical term is introduced to capture a defense that develops with the patient’s deepening, but fleeting awareness of painful transference feelings. The analyst’s attention to his countertransference is central to analysis of these defenses. An attempt is made to distinguish defense enactments from other types of defenses, and to differentiate the analyst’s countertransference reaction to this type of defense from countertransference reactions that might appear similar. The reasons for this dynamic in the interpersonal space are explored, and a clinical example that describes this phenomenon in the analytic moments is given.

*By invitation