You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
BEGINNING IN THE LATE 1940S AND EARLY 1950S countertransference began to be viewed from a new perspective. It became established, in some circles, that countertransference, originally considered a hindrance to the analytic work, constituted a source of analytic data not always obtainable from the patient's associations. (See Epstein and Feiner, 1979, for a summary of the literature).
With our increasing appreciation of the interpersonal nature of the analytic situation and the dialectic of the transference-countertransference interaction (see Ehrenberg, 1982), (1984, for a summary of the literature) it has become commonplace also to think of countertransference as an integral aspect of the analytic relationship, and to recognize that it has its impact on the patient whether or not we are aware of it. Because countertransference can be either a threat to analytic efforts or facilitate them, what has become clear is that it is incumbent on us to learn how to use it with sensitivity so that a genuine analytic process is maintained. One irony facing us, therefore, is that the growth of the movement in this direction has helped underscore the real dangers of misuse, and this in turn has served, to some extent, to reinforce traditional concerns about the risks involved, as well as natural tendencies to countertransference resistance.
The analyst's resistance to his awareness that there are countertransference problems, including resistance to the awareness of such resistance, precludes the possibility of utilizing countertransference data in the analysis. It actually increases the likelihood of countertransference affecting the work in less than optimal ways, thereby confirming the traditional hindrance point of view (Freud, 1910).