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In The History of Countertransference, Alberto Stefana traces the theory of countertransference from its early discovery as an impediment to effective
psychoanalytic practice through its ubiquitous use in present day analytic theory. This is a comprehensive and detailed book about the evolution of a theory, and with it, the family tree of psychoanalysis.
It is important to point out the subtitle of the book, From Freud to the British Object Relations School, because there are swathes of theoretical development, particularly Jungian, which are all but omitted from the book. But Stefana, a psychotherapist in private practice in Brescia, Italy, declares his focus from the start. So whilst I found myself thinking, ‘Yes, but what about ...’ to an idea that had been formulated by Jungians but was not yet galvanised by the British school, I had to remind myself about the remit of the book.
Stefana couches the development of countertransference theory within a cultural and historical context, closely following the alliances being forged and broken within the growing field of psychoanalysis. With each segue to the next theorist we learn who conducted their analysis, the names of their supervisors, types of patients they analysed, and the historical and cultural milieu in which they were practicing. With nearly 200 theorists cited, this allows readers to follow multiple strands of theoretical development as analysts build on their forebears or react to something they did not receive from their own analyst.
The history begins with complicated entanglements; some early analysts get drawn in by the yet to be named ‘erotic countertransference’ they experience with some of their patients. These pressures towards enactment, along with other related phenomena, lead Freud to address the issue at the Second International Conference of Psychoanalysis in 1910: ‘we have become aware of the ‘countertransference’ w