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Even though they provide confirmation of the possibilities of health, resistances identify the importance of anxiety and family processes in the child's mental life and psychological development. Countertransference reactions to children and adolescents point to the specific impact of both anxiety and family processes on the child's ego maturation and unfolding character traits. The interplay of resistance with transferencecountertransference clarifies the extent of the developmental, dynamic, and family aspects of the child or adolescent's difficulties. Countertransference with children and adolescents includes emotional responses not only to the child and the child's transference, but also to the behavior and relatedness of the parents, even if it is stimulated in part by the analyst's history and neurotic flaws. Countertransference refers to both the influence of the past on the analyst's anxieties and feelings about the child or the child's parents, and the influence of the child and the parents on the analyst's feelings and associations.
Little (1951, 1957) pointed out that the analyst's feelings mirror the patient's feelings, while the patient's feelings mirror the analyst's feelings in countertransference. With children and adolescents, countertransference includes emotional reactions that account for the parents' role in the development of the youngster's ego and self. Countertransference patterns reflect aspects of the child's inner world and the product of the family dynamics. I wish to discuss resistance and countertransference in the therapeutic process with children and adolescents, and to outline some common sources of resistance. I will suggest that as the analyst becomes part of the patient's life and inner world, developmental, dynamic, and family issues all emerge in the resistance-transferencecountertransference exchanges, in such a way that they convey the nature of the child's conflicts in the family together with the child's developmental defici