Countertransference: the analyst's retreat from the patient's vantage point

As analysts, we may agree with certain basic tenets: we should not impose our truths, whether or not theory-laden; we should maintain the focus on the patient's inner reality, not on how he or she lives in the world--out there; we should be prepared to be surprised, to learn something that hadn't occurred to us; we should look for multiple cues in the clinical data, pay attention to affect and state as may be expressed within the moment, and listen for subtleties that may convey something about how we are being experienced in the transference. But again and again, we fail to adhere to these precepts. Despite our best intentions, we seem to have a fundamental disinclination to maintaining these positions. I have tried to consider some reasons for this difficulty and its relation to the countertransference. Drawing upon several clinical examples, I have attempted to examine ways of enhancing our attunement to verbal and non-verbal cues from the patient which may direct us, sooner, to dimensions of our counter-transference responses otherwise overlooked.