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This paper is based on a lecture delivered before the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association in 1948. In his footnotes the author includes references to papers on countertransference that have appeared since his original lecture. He delineates what he calls the 'countertransference neurosis', the neurotic part of the countertransference which he considers to be universally present though with qualitative and quantitative differences in analysts of varying experience. The analyst has a profound resistance to the recognition of his countertransference though he may have considerable theoretical knowledge of it.
Countertransference is centered in the Oedipus complex. (The author limits his study to male analysts.) Prohibition of active phallic impulses favors a passive phallic reaction and the unconscious desire that the female patient fall in love with the analyst's penis. If this desire is frustrated, the analyst rejects and hates the patient. The erotic desire for the mother may also cause the analyst to wish that the patient establish no new relationships outside of the transference. The analyst rationalizes this wish by the rule of abstinence and by warning the patient of the importance of avoiding acting out. With a male patient a negative Oedipal countertransference is more usual. The analyst desires to be loved by the patient, to be possessed anally by the father. The analyst reacts to the patient's sexual life as to a primal scene and feels rejected and excluded, with reactions of envy, irritation, inferiority, anxiety, and guilt.
The patient may serve as a direct object for the expression of the analyst's needs through countertransference. The patient may also be used indirectly as an instrument for acting out by the analyst in relation to his professional activities. The profession of psychoanalysis has in itself an Oedipal significance. The role of the control analyst or didactic analyst as an archaic superego is discussed. Therapeutic zeal may r