Counter-Transference1 (1960)

What I want to say can be briefly stated.

I think that the use of this word counter-transference should now be brought back to its original use. We can use words as we like, especially artificial words like counter-transference. A word like ‘self’ naturally knows more than we do; it uses us, and can command us. But counter-transference is a term that we can enslave, and a perusal of the literature makes me think that it is in danger of losing its identity.

There is now quite a literature around the term, and I have tried to study it. In my paper ‘Hate in the Counter-transference’ (1947) (which is chiefly about hate), I said that one use of the word counter-transference would be to describe ‘abnormality in counter-transference feelings, and set relationships and identifications that are under repression in the analyst. The comment on this is that the analyst needs more analysis. …’

For the purposes of that paper I then gave two other possible meanings.

A discussion based on the failures of the analysts' own analyses must be futile. In a sense, this ends the debate.

The meaning of the word counter-transference can be extended, however, and I think we have all agreed to extend it a little so that we may take this opportunity to look at our work afresh. I shall return, however, to this idea that I have already expressed. Before I proceed I must go back to a remark made by Michael Fordham at the beginning of his paper, in which he quotes Jung as protesting against the idea that transference is the product of psycho-analytic technique, emphasizing that it is a general transpersonal or social phenomenon. Apart from the fact that I do not know what ‘transpersonal’ means, I think that confusion could arise here by a distortion of the use of the term transference as I think Freud introduced it. The characteristic of psycho-analytic technique is this use of transference and of the