Countertransference

Condensed History and Personal View of Issues With Regressed Patients

¹ Center for the Advanced Study of the Psychoses, San Francisco, California.

Freud’s ambivalently negative attitude toward countertransference discouraged systematic study until some psychoanalysts, predominantly Kleinians, began to treat patients with narcissistic neuroses. Recognizing the need to understand the unconscious and conscious contribution of the analyst to the therapeutic process, Heimann, Rosenfeld, Balint, and Racker pioneered in serious study of countertransference. Racker and Boyer found that unresolved countertransference problems contributed significantly to unfavorable responses to psychoanalysis in seriously disturbed patients. Searles, Giovacchini, Ogden, and Volkan have like-wise furthered countertransference research. Following a historical review, the author delineates his personal approach to understanding patients, especially seriously disturbed ones, in terms of the ongoing introjection of patient and analyst of each other’s projections. This approach stems from Rosenfeld’s initial propositions.