Steinberg, W. (New York). ‘The therapeutic utilization of countertransference’.  Quadrant,  22,  1, 1989.

This article sets out to achieve two goals: to consider the therapeutic possibilities of an examination of the thoughts, feelings, fantasies and dreams that are aroused in the analyst by patients, and to group these responses in an effort to offer possible meanings of the analyst's inner reactions to his patients.

The therapeutic potential of using one's own inner responses to patients is discussed under ‘useful’ and ‘neurotic’ countertransference and is illustrated by clinical experiences of the author, his colleagues, and supervisees. ‘Useful’ countertransference is exemplified by the analyst experiencing reactions in himself which do not make sense in terms of what he knows about himself, but which can fruitfully be applied to an understanding of the patient's experience. It is the work of the analyst, who ought to have greater access to and fewer defences against his own unconscious than the patient, to think about how his own experiences with a patient can inform him about what is going on within the patient. Sometimes, the analyst experiences the patient's fantasies before the patient is conscious of them. When this happens, it is important to link interpretations to the patient's material, rather than to speak solely from what is intuited. The author warns that not to do so can result in the patient's—and the analysts's—idealisation of the analyst's ability to ‘know’, as well as the analyst projecting pathological parts of himself onto the patient.

‘Neurotic’ countertransference is the term used to describe the ‘participation’ of the analyst and patient in each other's unresolved unconscious conflicts. This results in a repetition rather than an analysis of the patient's fantasies. The author quotes Fordham's opinion that the worst obstruction to analysis is the projective and introjective identifications that occur between patient and analyst. Despite the obvious potential damage of ‘neurotic’ countertransference, it does provide the opportunity to gain useful