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Gorkin presents a thorough exposition of countertransference, including an organized and detailed account of its uses as a therapeutic tool for resolving difficult clinical problems. He gives a historical overview of the construct, with a fresh presentation of the contributions of the analysts who have accepted and built upon Freud's basic concepts. He discusses the major contributors from the 1940's to the 1960's, including Fenichel, Klein, Sullivan, Winnicott, Little, and Racker. Gorkin also analyzes the origins and dynamics of countertransference and the purposes it serves. Here various contemporary clinicians are discussed, including Bion, Searles, Spotnitz, Ogden, Epstein, and Bollas. Two-thirds of the book is devoted to a lively, probing presentation of objective and subjective countertransference, organized in seven contexts: the disclosure of countertransference; sexualized countertransference; countertransference with suicidal patients; countertransference with borderline patients; countertransference with cross-cultural patients; countertransference in supervision; countertransference in termination. Gorkin generously describes his own successes and failures in case vignettes, and he provides a frank analysis of his subjective countertransference problems.
Gorkin discusses Spotnitz's work and describes modern psychoanalytic theory and technique of dealing with the resistances of narcissistic and borderline patients. He generally endorses modern analytic techniques, but he also cautions against the use of paradoxical and aggressive interventions that may pose risks to the patient's vulnerability. He proposes that in the more usual development of treatment, transference and countertransference resistances are observed, allowed to ripen, and dealt with in a progressive and measured way toward resolution. In this process the analyst proceeds parsimoniously and judiciously to facilitate the patient's overcoming resistances to progressive communication. If progre