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THE BURGEONING LITERATURE ON countertransference includes several reviews (Glover, 1955) ; (Orr, 1954) ; (Reich, 1960), the most recent and comprehensive of which is that of Langs (1976), although it restricts itself to writings which are available in English. As is consonant with the earlier view that psychoanalytic therapy is applicable only to neurotics, the vast majority of relevant material pertains to their treatment.
Freud (1910) introduced the term countertransference a few years before he wrote the bulk of his papers on technique, although he never devoted a special study to it. It was considered roughly as the obverse of transference, the repetition of the analyst's irrational, previously acquired attitudes, now directed toward the patient, and was assumed to be absent except in situations in which the therapist was inadequately analyzed. Freud deemed it to be the obligation of the analyst to eliminate such unconscious reactions as obstacles to treatment. Earlier, he had described how Breuer reacted to Anna O's erotic transference with anxiety and took a hurried vacation with his wife (Breuer and Freud, 1893-1895).
Today the definition of countertransference remains unsettled. Most analysts see Freud's original use of the term to define countertransference neuroses. Many, in agreement with Alexander (1948) and Little (1957), view countertransference to consist of all of the therapist's emotional responses to the patient but perhaps more see it as representing the whole of the analyst's unconscious reactions to the individual analyzand and particularly to the analyzand's own transference. In any event, the majority of the