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Fordham Clearly stated that ‘the transference and its accompanying countertransference remain the essential affective component in analytical psychotherapy’ (FORDHAM 5). This, in my view, is particularly true of the treatment of patients I shall be referring to in this paper.
Dependence, whether on drugs and/or on alcohol, is a complex problem with multiple actiological causes of varying importance, and one which extends well beyond the scope of this communication.
The content of this paper, therefore, is strictly limited to some considerations about transference and countertransference issues. The reason for putting the two together follows from the by now reasonable assumption that both belong to ‘the dialectical process between two persons in which each is equally involved’ (JUNG 7). Jung also stated that treatment can be nothing but the product of mutual influence in which the whole being of the analyst as well as that of the patient plays its part.
Fordham took the alchemical analogy in a creative and novel way when he began to realise that the analyst's feelings were responses to the patient and therefore a source for understanding the patient rather than himself (FORDHAM 3).
I shall advance the argument here that the transference/counter-transference process is essentially different when applied to patients who are chemically or alcohol dependent from how it is with other patients. Ordinary analytic techniques would be ineffective and would evoke responses in the analyst that would interfere with and impede