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ISSACHAROFF (1976) HAS STATED THAT IN the 1950's an interest in countertransference emerged with great vigor throughout the world, citing Racker (1948) in Argentina, Winnicott (1949) and P. Heimann (1950) in England, and in this country, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1950), Karen Horney (1939), Clara Thompson (1952), Tauber (1952), (1954), and Growley (1952). Most importantly, all of these analysts turned to countertransference to seek a better understanding of the patient in the ongoing process of psychoanalysis. Some went much farther than understanding the patient, but also scrutinized countertransference as a basis for deriving interventions which would facilitate the therapeutic process. I am referring specifically to Racker (1968), Heimann, Winnicott and Tauber, Margaret Little (1957) and Mabel Blake Cohen (1952).
Yet interest in countertransference phenomena did not spread throughout the various psychoanalytic communities at that time. However, it is true that during the past five years, in all schools of psychoanalysis, a wave of interest in countertransference as a valuable component in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, individual and group, has been rising with increasing spirit and vitality. The journals abound in papers on the subject.
This raises two questions. What did delay the scientific study of countertransference? And why have we become so interested in it today?
Why was a widespread interest in countertransference not generated in the 1950's when those remarkable papers were published? Why has it taken so long for us to pay serious attention to it as a therapeutic instrument?