The Opiate of the Analyst

Epstein L. and Feiner, A. H., eds.: Countertransference: The Therapist's Contribution to the Therapeutic Situation. New York: Jason Aronson, 1979.

THE PEAKING OF INTEREST IN countertransference during the last ten years has many origins, not the least of which involves the growing awareness on the part of many analysts of the inevitability of countertransferential phenomena, and their inherent potential for elucidating the forces at work in each particular individual analytic setting. As is usually the case with scientific investigation, increased knowledge and understanding has led to ever increasing questions and puzzlement. Thus, the once prominent but unwieldy unitary notion of countertransference has given way to more refined ideas regarding the shape and nature of the variety of personal reactions the analyst may have to his patient. These newer classifications have raised additional important concerns, ones which Drs. Epstein and Feiner have attempted to address in the collection of essays they have edited entitled Countertransference: The Therapist's Contribution to the Therapeutic Situation.

Among the more frequently encountered countertransference categorizations are such distinctions as "subjective countertransference, " "objective countertransference, " "positive countertransference, " and "negative countertransference." Each of these classifications have in turn their own subdivisions, and it seems likely that with further study these groupings will spawn even more offspring. Such distinctions are useful when they provide a clarification of what is transpiring in the analytic situation, and thereby help to orient the therapist to a more efficacious position vis-à-vis his patient. They cease to serve a constructive purpose when they become armaments in a metapsychological polemic over what does and does not constitute countertransference. Happily, this straw man receives minimal play in the new volume compiled by Epstein