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In the history of psychoanalytic ideas, the notion of transference preceded that of countertransference. The latter was officially mentioned for the first time in The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy (Freud, 1910a), but its actual appearance dates back to the Dora case (Freud, 1905).1 From the beginning, what has united the two concepts is that both were first understood as obstacles and then as tools that were indispensable to the cure.
With respect to countertransference, Freud especially emphasized its impeding aspects in considering that the analyst could not go beyond the limits of his internal resistances (1910a), and consequently he suggested that the analyst undergo a personal analysis, even though he also stated on several occasions that everyone possesses a tool in his own unconscious for interpreting the expressions of the unconscious of others (Freud, 1915).
Perhaps we can consider this the foundation of empathy!
Actually, his attitude was rather ambivalent,2 inasmuch as he feared that an emphasis on the interpretive aspects of analytic practice (and thus the subjectivist ones), over those that were more simply explanatory, could fuel accusations of charlatanism made against psychoanalysis (Freud, 1926).
Among the pioneers, Ferenczi was the one who most emphasized the centrality of the person of the analyst and his psychic structure (1909), but, as we know, this led him to radically modify his technique, to the point of introducing mutual analysis, which provoked a heated controversy with Freud.
The representation of countertransference as an obstacle to the understanding of transference was maintained in classical psychoanalysis after Freud's death as well. A major reversal of this position occurred beginning with Heimann's paper presented at the International Psychoanalytical Association Congress in Zurich in , in