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Patterns of Consistency and Deviation in Therapists' Countertransference Feelings

Received December 21, 1999; revised July 28, 2000; accepted September 26, 2000. From the Department of Education and Psychology, Linköping University, S-581 83 Linköping, Sweden. E-mail: rolfh{at}ipp.liu.se Address correspondence to Dr. Holmqvist.

The author addressed the question of consistency in psychotherapists' countertransference feelings. Research findings have indicated that the therapist's own personal feeling style may be more important than the patient's impact on the therapist's feelings. In this study, the feelings of 9 psychotherapists toward 28 patients were followed by using checklist self-report after each session during moderately long psychotherapies. ANOVAs and discriminant analyses showed that the therapists were very consistent in their feeling style over different patients and over time. The consistency in feelings toward the individual patients was smaller. Deviations from consistency are analyzed, and their importance for the understanding of different aspects of the countertransference is discussed. It is suggested that a meaningful use of the countertransference concept ought to be based on systematic identifications of recurrent and deviant patterns in the therapist's reactions.

Key Words: Countertransference