Letter

To the Editor:

Tansey and Burke's letter (Psychoanalytic Books, 1, 548-552) in response to my review (Psychoanalytic Books, 1, 250-254) of their book, Understanding Countertransference, considerably distorts what I wrote in that review. Using out-of-context quotes from my review (and in one instance a misquote), they reach an odd conclusion. They attribute to me the view that countertransference and empathy are not worth detailed investigation. Hardly so. What I believe I had stated clearly is that my main disagreement with these authors is that I do not accord the concept of projective identification the prominence and emphasis that they give to it. I pointed out that while their ideas are controversial they do offer for those who see projective identification as central a detailed, systematic approach to its application. Undoubtedly, many will embrace their book but others will find unacceptable their radical idea that countertransference and projective identification are more or less synonymous.

They assume that I view analytic material in a one-sided way. Quite the contrary. I simply believe that complex transference-countertransference interactions are best understood without the extensive application of the concept of projective identification. Perhaps a major difficulty they create for the reader is the slippery vagueness of their definition of projective identification. In their letter it is at times referred to as simply the “emotional impact” the patient has on the therapist or the process by which the patient “influences” the therapist. If that is all it is, why not abandon the term altogether, along with its lingering connotations of mysterious translocation of parts of the self? Why not use less contaminated and more easily definable concepts such as affect communication and affect attunement, referring to processes readily observed and supported by the findings of infant researchers?