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To understand elimination of the division between two people, or identification, necessitates the re-establishment of a pre-existing identity. In other words, to understand is to unite oneself with someone else and therefore to love oneself and another as one and the same thing. The equivalent of this understanding is the positive countertransference which means literally love and union. The negative aspect of the countertransference, lack of love, is therefore a disturbance of the union and corresponds to a disturbance in understanding. This leads the author to conclude that the resolution of any negative countertransference is a decisive factor if the psychoanalytic process is to succeed.
Transference is a constant reality which normally has to be experienced by the analyst in a constant way. The analyst has to identify with the id and ego of the patient, which the author calls 'concordant identifications'; but he must also identify with the internal objects of the patient which lead to the 'complementary identification'. If the analyst is aware of and is able to handle the free play of his countertransference feelings, especially the complementary identification, he will have a useful technical instrument with which to evaluate the patient's progress. Proper countertransference feelings depend on two important factors: first, the degree of the analyst's own integration, and second, the analyst's ability to do for the patient what he did for himself, namely, to observe with a rational attitude the irrational part of his personality.
Just as we differentiate between various types of transference feelings, so should we differentiate between 'countertransference neurosis', and 'countertransference of a pathological character'. In the latter, the masochism of the analyst creates a negative countertransference and therefore precludes successful treatment. In pathological cases, the analyst literally sabotages his professional capacities. Racker describes some