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Dear Editor
In my recent essay, “Concordant and Complementary Counter-transference: A Clarification” in the spring issue of this journal, I argued that Racker's equation of empathy with concordant counter-transference (in which the analyst identifies with the patient's self) and his equation of problematic countertransference with complementary identification (in which the analyst identifies with the patient's projected object) had for many decades been uncritically accepted by the psychoanalytic community. But in his essay, “Understanding Countertransference” (Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 9, 185-194), Alex Tarnopolsky defines complementarity as the analyst's identification with “something that the patient disowns” (p. 185), a statement that leaves open the possibility that sometimes it may be the self that the patient disowns while at other times it will be the object. Tarnopolsky provides a clinical example of the former and writes, “The patient is therefore not always necessarily in the position of a ‘child’ vis-à-vis the ‘parent’ therapist; in the example it is the other way round” (p. 188). In saying this, Tarnopolsky, like Kernberg, recognized that counter-transference identification with the patient's self, like counter-transference identification with the patient's object, can constitute problematic countertransference. However, whereas Kernberg avoids overtly criticizing Racker by calling problematic counter-transference identification with the patient's self “complementary” rather than “concordant” without explaining his reasons for so departing from Racker's usage, Tarnopolsky states, “This has been called complementary reaction to, or complementary identification with, the patient; but I do not follow strictly definition” (p. 187). Although he does not go on to elaborate upon the significance