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The therapist may project images from his own past onto the patient, may act out in the treatment, or may show a counterpart of the transference, 'an empathic identification with the analysand'; or countertransference may include all the analyst's unconscious needs and conflicts that influence his understanding or technique.
In defensive countertransference, the therapist uses his own defenses in treatment. He may, for example, make masochistic identification of himself with the patient; treatment may revive the therapist's Oedipal anxieties because the patient as a love object is taboo; or it may arouse the therapist's fear of aggression or his self-punishing tendencies. He may see the patient as a representative of his own id, or he may project his own superego onto the patient. Treatment may cause the therapist to be disturbed over the vulnerability of his ego ideal.
Reactive countertransference is the response, often entirely conscious, to strong emotions directed to the therapist, especially to sadism and aggression. Or it may be the reaction to a personal quality of the patient, such as personal unattractiveness, and is often carried from one patient to the next.
Induced or suggested countertransference is the therapist's response to the patient's wish to see him in a given role. Here the personality of the analyst counts less than the strongly cathected fantasy.