Lowering the Barriers to Psychoanalysis

DR. ISSACHAROFF'S (1976) RECENT PAPER on counter-transference is a welcome contribution to a discussion of an area of psychoanalytic endeavor about which much has been written but still remains one of demanding scrutiny. Dr. Issacharoff has initiated needed discourse on a topic that is pivotal to the psychoanalytic process. There is agreement with his thesis that countertransference may be a "barrier to knowing", mild assent that it emerges via the processes of projective and introjective identification, and that one example of this would be the teasing out of the analyst's "greed". I believe in addition, that sometimes his quotations do not give the reader the full flavor of the original, that there are some internal inconsistencies and contradictions in the paper, and, furthermore, the example of "greed" as a destructive countertransferential component in the last examples in the paper may be, on the basis of the data given, a misapplication of the term as it was originally intended. But these criticisms do not detract from the impact his essay will have on an exchange of ideas among psychoanalysts. (See Page 1, this issue—Ed.)

Dr. Issacharoff gives the impression that Freud defined the term countertransference in 1910 but seemed to do little with the idea. He states that Freud's writings contain only two explicit references to the issue. The fact is that there are six references to the topic of countertransference in the index to the standard edition of Freud's works, and by suggesting as Dr. Issacharoff did, that "Freud's first reference in 1910 consists of a single paragraph stating that the analyst is limited by his own neurotic conflicts" Dr. Issacharoff does scant justice to Freud's amazing insight. I don't think Dr. Issacharoff intended this. Now what actually did Freud say in 1910? Note:

We have noticed that no psycho-analyst goes further than his own complexes