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December 19, 1986
I welcome Dr. Blechner's straightforward and thought-provoking comments on my paper "Transference-Countertransference," in which I have tried to point to an inextricable intertwining of the two. His reaction to the paper is in many respects positive, but he deplores "wandering terminology" and the "recklessness with denotative meanings" of a term, referring to my using the term "countertransference" not only in respect to the analyst but also in respect to equivalent reactions of the patient to the analyst.
I readily admit the inconvenience of using "countertransference" in an unconventional way, and I may underestimate the troublesome nature of that inconvenience. If people come to find it too confusing to think of countertransference of the patient, I would not insist on that usage. But I do believe that the 75-year-old convention, in view of present understanding of transference and countertransference, is an anachronism. Confusion may end in chaos, and confusion may serve as a spur to reappraising and rethinking our terms so as to promote clarification. Generally speaking, psychoanalytic concepts and terms have, from early on, changed—sometimes broadened, occasionally