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In recent years many authors from a wide variety of theoretical viewpoints, have commented upon the potential for the therapist's countertransference to reflect the emotional life of the patient. However, there has been relatively little said about the mechanism by which this occurs. What has been written revolves around the concept of projective identification, but the process by which the patient's intra-psychic fantasy becomes actualized in the therapist's emotions has not been detailed. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the mechanism of this “emotional induction” and to examine its implications for therapeutic technique.
The telepathic act is supposed to consist in a mental act in one person instigating the same mental act in another person…. One is led to the suspicion that this is the original archaic method of communication between individuals and that in the course of phylogenetic evolution, it has been replaced by the better method of giving information … but the older method might have persisted in the background and still be able to put itself into effect under certain conditions.
The purpose of this article is to account for a clinical phenomenon that can be observed in treating severely disturbed psychiatric patients. I call it “emotional induction.” By this term I mean the awakening of feelings in the inner life of the therapist that properly belong to the patient. Most of the patients have a deep disturbance in their ability to know that they are feeling something, much less to find names and concepts for these feelings and to communicate them to another human being. Diagnostically, they include patients with narcissistic, antisocial, psychotic, and alexithymic disorders.