The ordinary and the extraordinary countertransference.

This is both a clinical and an epistemological inquiry into the concept of countertransference. A distinction is made between the ordinary countertransference, a transitory disruption residing within the analyst's consciousness, and the extraordinary countertransference, an impasse intolerable to the analyst to such an extent that it remains outside awareness. This distinction, rooted in the history of psychoanalytic thought, is here traced in a recorded psychoanalysis.

The upward slope: a study of psychoanalytic transformations.

In an examination of twelve audiotaped psychoanalytic sessions, the authors, using both quantitative and qualitative methods, observed a stepwise progression in mental organization, which they term the upward slope. Its constituents include a phase of regression (desymbolization and the agony of equivalence), a phase of transition (disruptive enactment leading to transitional space), and a phase of reorganization (triangulation leading to symbolic synthesis). The hypothesis of a phase-specific progression is advanced, wherein different forms of mental functioning evoke distinct dynamic processes of psychic repair The authors present detailed clinical summaries of the sessions they examined, as well as their own observational comments, to illustrate these ideas.