Countertransference in the Treatment of Friends and Relatives*

I know that the practice of treating relatives has long been a taboo in the medical community except in the most extreme of emergency circumstances, and in the psychoanalytic and general mental health profession it is regarded as illegitimate, unethical, exploitative, and destructive; such treatment is bound to fail. “It is too revolutionary an idea,” consultants told me, “and you may be professionally excommunicated.”

I had some excellent role models, for innovative ideas. The establishment and success of the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies, an innovative school now in its second decade, has played a significant role in the development and elaboration of basic psychoanalytic principles. It was at the Center that experiential and emotional learning was added to didactic training and it was there that the resistances that interfere with learning were given priority. It was there that focus on academic degrees and the accumulation of facts and information were made secondary to therapeutic functioning and constructive emotional communication. And it was there that I was regularly exposed to, and required to function within the context of, multiple transferences and countertransference phenomena. My patients were in my classes. My supervisees were in my classes. My relatives were in my classes. The acute self-consciousness and awkwardness which