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highlighted the importance of the interactional field of transference-countertransference in the analyst/analysand situation (Moscowitz, 2014), its systematic theoretical integration came only later in Loewald’s work (1960, 1971, 1975). Loewald was a transformational figure, working from the 1960s onwards. Originally strongly influenced in the direction of phenomenology by Heidegger, (1962) Loewald might be seen in connection with Winnicott (1947, 1950, 1972), Erikson (1954), Kohut (1977), Mitchell (1993, 1997), Aron (1996), Hoffman (1998), and Bromberg (1998) among others with more ‘open systems’ versions of drive theory and object relations theory . In his developmental model, the child’s ego arises from a nucleus of maternal/infant mutual involvement of body and mind, where the mother’s psyche interacts with the undifferentiated infant’s state in a spiraling and oscillating development of integration and disintegration, pushing toward further integration. This developmental model has implications for transference and countertransference in the sense that all experience is emergent from intersubjective transactions , even when the focus is on the individual (Loewald 1960). Acknowledging the importance of the findings coming out of child analysis and analysis with psychotic and borderline patients, where the analyst’s reactions are under stronger pressure from the patient’s unconscious, Loewald (1971) asserts further that transference and countertransference cannot be viewed separately and that both analyst and patient exhibit transference-countertransference reactions, which are normal ingredients of the analytic process . Loewald’s insights became a rich template for countertransference discussions not only within the increasingly diversified North American psychoanalytic culture, but worldwide. From this point forward, countertransference was seen as an inevitable aspect of the analytic relationship in which patient and analyst are intertwined – one of the dominant perspectives in psychoanalysis today. This view has parallels with some elements of French inter-subjectivist thought in France, Belgium and the French-speaking analytic community in North America. Sometimes called ‘The Third model’, this view posits that in human development, the ‘two-person mind’ precedes that of the ‘one-person’ psychic autonomy of drive, defense and intrapsychic fantasy: In the first phase of human life, the baby’s mind must be considered in the context of the care- taking environment (the two-person mind) before the internal topographic differentiation among unconscious, preconscious and conscious systems, and structuralization of id, ego and superego (the one-person mind) can be accomplished. Through this process of ‘subjectivisation’ (becoming thus internally differentiated and structured subject), the intimate connection with the ‘real (potentially traumatizing) other’ (Lacan 1966/1977) is paramount. Laplanche (1993, 1999) brought Lacan’s statement of the ‘traumatic real (other)’ – the caretaker - into the intersubjective realm. He emphasized that the unconscious sexuality (of the adult caretaker), triggered by the closeness with the infant’s body, ‘contaminates’ intimate exchanges with the infant in the form of enigmatic messages . Others extend this developmental concept further into the realm directly applicable to the clinical exchange and countertransference, by focusing on the ‘activity of representation’ and ‘deferred action in naming of affects’, through which the child/the patient “constitutes the I” (Aulagnier
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