Editors' Introduction

Freud in 1910 warned against intrusion of countertransference and insisted that the analyst “recognize…and overcome it.” His ideas on the subject were interpreted by the psychoanalytic community as a caution against its appearance and use. Countertransference was something to be avoided and dismissed, an anathema to the analytic process. However, analysts beginning with Sandor Ferenczi and Helene Deutsch through D. W. Winnicott, Heinrich Racker, and others rethought its role and began to see the therapeutic value of countertransference. Hyman Spotnitz was also among those early pioneers who were investigating its function. In 1949 in a paper presented before the American Psychiatric Association he stated that the analyst “must be capable of feeling emotions induced by his patient and utilize these feelings to help the patient with his resistances.” This statement challenged the classical Freudian notions about countertransference. Through the continuing clinical work of Spotnitz and his colleagues at the Jewish Board of Guardians and through the work of other psychoanalysts, the concept of countertransference underwent considerable revision. Tremendous resistances had to be resolved, both on the professional and personal level. The findings generally met with skepticism within the psychoanalytic domain. On a personal level, the characterological resistances of the analyst were called into question due to the nature of the transference/countertransference matrix. Yet through the original contributions of Hyman Spotnitz and others we know the difference between subjective and objective countertransference, and how the objective countertransference when effectively utilized is an invaluable diagnostic