Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Review. XLIX, No. 4, 1962: Death as a Countertransference. Arthur Burton. Pp. 3-20.

Burton feels that in these times patients introduce discussions of death with greater frequency and suggests that, hampered by countertransference problems toward death, psychotherapists do not deal adequately with this problem in their patients. In order to study possible manifest and latent attitudes of psychotherapists toward death, he devised a questionnaire of statement-items on death and

sent it to members of the American Psychoanalytic Association. From the replies, he concludes that psychoanalysts are not without deeply rooted defenses against anxieties about death. He discusses these defenses and divides them into three general groups, denial, displacement, and compensation. The interpretation of thanatophobia as castration or separation anxiety would be an example of denial. The overwhelming emphasis on analysis of the libido would be an example of displacement. A 'fiction of invincibility' for feelings of weakness and finiteness would be an example of a compensatory defense. Included for purposes of comparison and control are the responses to the same questionnaire from a group of Episcopal ministers.