International Journal of Psychoanalysis. XXXIII, 1952. Part I.: The Emotional Position of the Analyst in the Psychoanalytic Situation. Maxwell Gitelson. Pp. 1-10.

Gitelson surveys the vicissitudes of the concepts of 'transference' and 'countertransference' from the beginning to the present. He presents a carefully worked out and clinically documented theoretical division of analysts' reactions to patients into two groups: 1, reactions to the patient as a whole, which he demonstrates to be 'transferences', and 2, reactions to partial aspects of the patient, which are 'countertransferences'. The former are based on survivals (even in a well-analyzed analyst) of ancient transference potentials and are likely to appear very early as a reaction to a particular patient. The usual sublimative tools of intellectual curiosity, empathy, and helpfulness may break down into scoptophilia, sympathetic identification, and therapeutic zeal, or contrary feelings of indifference, boredom, irritation, uneasiness. They may give the analyst early indication that the patient should be referred to another analyst. The latter (countertransferences) have the character of emergency defense reactions caused by the opening up of unanalyzed territory in the analyst by the patient's transference, the material he presents, or his reaction to the analyst as a real person. They appear later and occur in the context of an established analytic situation. They should be analyzed before they lead to intrusions alien to the technique if possible, but if they are not their analysis afterward with the patient may be an important integrative experience for both, fostering the patient's discovery of the reality of the actual interpersonal situation as opposed to the transference. The analyst who does not need the therapeutic incognito as a countertransference defense does not fear that degree of self-revelation required to accomplish this.