Between Analyst and Patient: New Dimensions in Countertransference and Transference: Edited by Helen C. Meyers. The Analytic Press. 1986. Pp. 268. (Distributed by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., Publishers, Hillsdale, N.J., USA.)

In her introduction to Between Analyst and Patient: New Dimensions in Countertransference and Transference, Helen C. Meyers says she intended the book as an exploration of some currently controversial issues in psychoanalysis; the 1981 symposium, out of which this book grew, was at the beginning of a wave of interest in the interaction of transference and countertransference which has resulted in, for example, three articles on countertransference in a single issue of one major journal and a four-article exploration of countertransference in another.

Between Analyst and Patient is a collection of sixteen essays, four of which have been published before, on various aspects of transference and countertransference in the contexts of the difficult patient, of brief psychotherapy, and of psychotherapy with women; for each of these three areas there are five articles, one being a review of the other contributions to that section. This structure has the advantage of allowing the reader to sample a range of viewpoints within the analytic approach, but the disadvantage of lacking a coherent focus. Dr Meyers states in her introduction that countertransference is showing the same development already seen in transference: once regarded simply as an obstacle to clinical work, it is becoming recognized as a central concern; yet a number of the contributors say comparatively little about countertransference.

As might be expected, the writers dealing with the difficult patient assume that there will be countertransference