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TODAY THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND discussion of countertransference responses has become respectable. This is in sharp contrast to the analytic ideology of even just a short decade back. Freud (1910) had warned us about the need to do away with our feelings toward patients since they interfered with analytic neutrality and would inevitably disrupt the course of analysis. Perhaps the analyst would have to seek further analysis for himself to achieve this objective.
With the increasing realization that analysis is a very personal experience for the analyst as well as the patient, it was concluded that the analyst's feelings cannot be swept away, nor should they be, by further training analysis. We have learned also that much can be learned about the patient through our countertransference responses (see Epstein and Feiner 1979). Indeed, in many instances, and this is especially true of patients suffering from relative fixations on primitive mental states, a favorable turn of events which preserves the analytic setting from chaotic collapse may well depend upon the recognition of how a relationship based upon the interaction of transference and countertransference elements recapitulates the repetition compulsion.
Thus, countertransference can be both good and bad for analytic resolution. Obviously, if it is unrecognized, the analyst will lose his analytic orientation, and as Freud (1910) insisted, it will lead to deleterious effects. More often than not the therapist becomes intrusive and subtly blames the patient because the analysis is not proceeding as it should. He may make interpretations that are really criticisms,