Understanding countertransference

Abstract

Summary The author addresses some conceptual and clinical aspects of counter-transference. Two concepts are described: one, countertransference as an undesirable result of the therapist's conflicts; and two, countertransference as a response to the patient's communication and therefore a tool for the understanding of the patient's psychodynamics. This second model assumes that countertransference results from an active interaction between the patient's and the therapist's conscious and unconscious processes. Three countertransference positions are described: empathy, complementarity and enactment. These are based on the quality and intensity of projective identifications. In empathy the therapist resonates emotionally with the patient; there is an intuitive understanding of the patient's predicament. In complementarity the therapist experiences something that the patient disowns. In enactment the therapist performs in words or deeds what the patient disowns. ‘Transference is first known to the analyst through the stirrings of his own heart’