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.
This is primarily a psycho-historical book that aims to study the theoretical conceptualisation and clinical use of counter-transference as it has evolved over the years. The author is an experienced psychoanalytic psychotherapist and academic, with a background in clinical psychology, who has written extensively on the history and epistemology of psychoanalysis. Following a foreword by Robert Hinshelwood, in which he suggests that this book attempts to bring some much-needed cohesion to the various theoretical strands on the subject of counter-transference, the author suggests that the great spread in the understanding of the principles involved in the identification, definition and utilisation of counter-transference emerged following the various pathologies encountered by analysts in practice.
The first chapter, entitled “The Origins of the Notion of Counter-transference,” discusses the early struggles of the psychoanalytic pioneers. The first time a public debate occurred on the phenomenon of counter-transference was in 1910 at the 2nd IPA Congress held in Nuremberg. Freud then spoke of the need for the psychoanalyst to exercise the task of self-analysis, in response to the patient’s transferential impact on him. Stefana thinks that Freud had a “bi-forkal” vision of counter-transference: on one hand, it is something to be suppressed, and on the other, a useful tool to perceive the unconscious communication transmitted by the patient.
Interestingly, the author suggests that Freud’s resistance to using counter-transference as an interactive instrument had a political and protective motive due to the fact that his contemporaries were struggling with it and generating their own theories. At the same time, the author suggests that Freud was fully conscious of the unconscious power of the effect of the transference and the value of the analyst’s use of the counter-transference mainly not to interfere with the patient’s unconscious communications.
Chapter 2, “Freud and th