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THIS PAPER EXAMINES COUNTERIDENTIFICATION, a process contributing to impasses in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. I define counteridentification as an unconscious dynamic whereby a therapist colludes with his/her patient by being defensive in a way in close structural resemblance to the defensive manner the patient has assumed. My definition entails two aspects of the process: "counter, " referring to the therapist-authored defensive or resistant activity; and "identification, " to the replication of a psychologically meaningful constellation evidenced by another.
The process of countertransference in recent decades has gained abundant attention. Counteridentification, in distinction, has received little. I wish to show in this essay that counteridentification exerts great influence in fostering therapeutic stalemates, and that its understanding promotes their resolution. I have studied the effects of counteridentification upon therapeutic impasses in the individual supervision of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and inasmuch as I have observed the resolution of such contretemps most often through supervisory exploration, this paper is intended, in large part, as a proposal concerning a productive focus for psychoanalytic supervision. I have found focusing upon the counteridentificatory genesis of stalemated therapies to be fruitful across the spectrum from intensive psychotherapy with well-integrated individuals to psychoanalytically-informed work with low functioning persons with severe psychiatric histories. I have also observed expressions of the process of counteridentification in group supervision, and have become increasingly attuned to the influence of this process in my own psychoanalytic efforts.