Freud describes transference as both the greatest danger and the best tool for analytic work. He refers to the work of making the repressed past conscious. Besides these two implied meanings of transference, Freud gives it a third meaning: it is in the transference that the analysand may relive the past under better conditions and in this way rectify pathological decisions and destinies. Likewise three meanings of countertransference may be differentiated. It too may be the greatest danger and at the same time an important tool for understanding, an assistance to the analyst in his function as interpreter. Moreover, it affects the analyst's behavior; it interferes with his action as object of the patient's reexperience in that new fragment of life that is the analytic situation, in which the patient should meet with greater understanding and objectivity than he found in the reality or fantasy of his childhood.

What have present-day writers to say about the problem of countertransference?1