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unconscious fantasy interweaves with such a pattern. Forging links to the analysand’s historical narrative is part of the interpretive strategy that guides this attentional set along with the analyst’s ability to recognize the enacted internal object relation. Likewise, defenses are instantiated in unconscious fantasies that include wish/defense compromise formations (Erreich, 2003). The attention to defenses and the active parsing of the analysand’s compromise formations, especially the ways in which these are entwined with veridical or constructed historical narratives, requires a more directed attentional set. A significant way in which the analyst evolves a sense of the patient’s early object relations is via understanding the here-and-now transference experience. Repetitious patterns in the here-and-now may correspond to internalized self- and object-configurations that structure the transference/countertransference relationship. Through this attentional mode of listening, the aim is to elaborate and re-transcribe the analysand’s historical narrative or personal myths about his/her history, i.e. Laplanche’s (1994) ideas on the child as hermeneut. These will play a part in the evolving process of historical re-transcription and the creation of new meanings. While this stance also includes an ongoing receptivity to emergent, (and perhaps novel) ways of being, there is an emphasis on recognition and identification of maladaptive defensive repetitions or old relational patterns that emerge in the here-and-now. This latter area of therapeutic action represents an aspect of the stance that is oriented toward the development of a deeper understanding of the past, but not in a manner that implies past memories exist in some static, preformed, or internally localizable way, nor are they constructed without the shaping of unconscious fantasy. Historical references are not assumed to be in a one-to-one relationship with what actually occurred nor do enacted scenarios replicate the past in some faithful way. Old patterns emerge and develop, becoming re-transcribed and reconstructed in the après-coup of analytic process. New experience is particularly oriented toward countering past maladaptive expectations and fixed scenarios. In this way, historical narratives change as the analytic process evolves. In this attentional mode, the analyst has, in a preconscious way, the analysand’s evolving historical narrative in the background of his/her mind. This readiness aids in the identification of modes of relating that may constitute repetitions of the past. Once such relational patterns are identified, various types of transference interpretations may be offered to further understand these patterns. Roth (2001) explicates four levels of transference interpretation aimed at linking the patient’s history to current or external events, unconscious fantasies, and enactments in relation to the analyst/analysand relationship. Through the use of a clinical vignette (offered previously by Giovacchini [1982]), Roth delineates these four levels of transference interpretation among which the analyst chooses at any given moment: The recognition of relational patterns, reflective of unconscious, fantasied expectations, dreads, and/or traumatic repetitions, is an interpretive strategy distinguishing this directed approach from that of the sustained and diffuse openness to emergent process for the purpose of elaborating unconscious fantasy. The theorists associated with this particular attentional mode include (but are not limited to) Freudian and Neo-Freudian theorists, Kleinian and neo-
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