Getting cold feet, defining "safe-enough" borders: Dissociation, multiplicity, and integration in the analyst's experience

This paper attempts to explore the fate of the analyst's multiple self/othe r organizations during rimes of heightened countertransferential enact me n t. It is suggested that such countertransference activity involves the "de- homogenization" of otherwise indecipherably integrated self/other constella tions, evoked independently or in response to, but always in interaction wi th, the patient's own unique organization of multiple centers of psychic aw areness and unconscious receptivity. An extended clinical example is used t o illustrate the theoretical conceptualization.