There are many pieces to the interpersonal interactions of patient and therapist. Typically, all therapies involve the following: constancy of therapist's interest no matter how disturbing the subject, suspension of moral judgment, therapist's empathy, insight, understanding, and acceptance, patient's opportunity to speak the unspeakable now, reliability of therapist in keeping appointments, the duration of the session, the attempt to put patient's welfare first, the safe environment that the therapist's structure provides in which the patient can regress, and the therapist allowing him/herself to be used as a transference object without the interference of counter-transference.
The hallmarks of analysis are making the unconscious conscious and the regressive transference neurosis. To understand the transference neurosis, a doctor has to keep in mind that the patient's experience in therapy approximates early experiences in the present; past traumas feel as if they were actually happening now. The ‘observing ego’, or the part of us that watches what we do and say in some objective manner, watches all this and tolerates the anxiety that is produced.
Since the therapist may not meet needs of all the patient in the group the therapist can not be perfect and know all of the client's needs and wishes, and since the therapist does not act like the object of the transference the therapist is not judgmental like the critical parent, or uncaring like the neglecting parent, frustration results, promoting more regression. This allows for the examination of these feelings, and exploration of the differences between fantasies and wishes versus acts. The observing ego learns more and more about what the whole person does. This is what makes analysis of transference so powerful.
In short term therapy the idea is similar. The groups of patients become increasingly able to adopt an attitude of self-observation, therapeutic interest, and therapeutic alliance........
