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preconscious, resonating with the work of Green (1974), Joseph (1985) and Madeleine Baranger (1993). Recently, the importance of working in the here and now, in the context of the ego psychological approach to working within the transference and countertransference and highlighting the importance of building representations and structure (Busch, 2013), constitute additional connecting points with French psychoanalysis. Spearheading this contemporary ego psychological approach, Paul Gray (1973, 1982, 1986, 1987, 1990, 1994, 1996) developed a technique for bringing unconscious resistances to the analysand’s attention, based upon the patient’s use of the method of free association. By closely following the patients’ associations, Gray could demonstrate unconscious resistances in action (change of affect, topic, silences), identify and analyze them. Gray (1973) postulated that “the analyst’s primary goal is always the analysis of the patient’s psyche, not the patient’s life” (p. 477), maintaining a focus on the psychological reality ‘inside’ the analysis. All else was viewed as a potential ‘defensive flight to reality’. The analyst was to focus on the flow of the associations, in order not to interfere with the development of the transference neurosis. The analytic focus should remain exclusively on the moment-to-moment vicissitudes (‘close process monitoring’) of the analysand’s free associations. Gray (1982, 1994) pointed out that although a theory of resistances mediated by the unconscious ego has long existed within psychoanalysis, it is often not implemented in technique. In his classic paper on a “developmental lag” in psychoanalytic technique, Gray addressed the failure of contemporary psychoanalysis to apply the theoretical knowledge about the unconscious ego to the intrapsychic life. He outlined the problem in the following way: “It has for some time been my conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that the way a considerable proportion of analysts listen to and perceive their data has, in certain significant respects, not evolved as I believe it would have if historically important concepts concerned with the defensive functions of the ego had been wholeheartedly allowed their place in the actual application of psychoanalytic technique” (Gray, 1982, p. 622). Gray’s (1994, 1996) ‘ close process attention’ of the defensive functioning of the verbal flow of each session focuses on transference analysis revolving around concerns for the analyst’s possible judgmental reactions, within the structural conflict paradigm. Within this paradigm, Gray strenuously argued for the prioritization of micro-interpretations of resistances during any phase of analytic treatment over ‘requiring’ the patient to continuously free associate. ‘Close process attention defense analysis’ is a specific version of an individualized intensively interpretative approach towards judgmental attitude displaced and/or projected by the patient onto to the analyst. In accordance with the ego psychological principles, effective resistance analysis involves an exploration and working through of the nature of the threat to the ego rather than the contents of the resistance. Gray’s critics include those, who argued that his method did not go far enough in shedding the ‘attraction’ of the topographic/archeological-like unearthing of the unconscious
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