<p>In this article the author examines some of the background for a frequently observed undifferentiated use of the term/concept countertransference, in which the unconsciousness of the patient threatens to get lost. The author describes and discusses some passages from Freud, in which he defines countertransference as a disrupting “blind spot” and simultaneously assumes an unconscious perception potential (receiver model) with which the analyst “understands” the unconscious of the patient. In this antagonistic spectrum of meaning, the author sees a source for the temptation to neglect a meticulous differentiation and to develop the notion of having a direct access to the unconscious via countertransference. The author sets this misreception against the importance of the issues and the preconscious for the conceptualization of countertransference. Based on two brief clinical scenarios she investigates what happens in the process of countertransference work and where this occurs in the psychic apparatus. In this context, the occasionally criticized topographic model of Freud and more recent research on the preconscious, in which the preconscious is conceptualized as a creative network, have proved to be suitable.</p>