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The development of our expertise as therapists depends, of course, on our acquisition of particular skills. It also depends, we are likely to think, on our growth in general, on such matters as our enlargement of our ability to tolerate feelings of different sorts and our growing wisdom about the human condition. It is difficult, however, to define just what this more general relationship is. We use the concept of “countertransference” in this regard, saying that the therapist comes to indulge less in unconscious projection onto the patient of his needs, feelings, and conflicts the more he becomes knowledgeable about himself. But instead of articulating this important concept into a general theory of development, instead of furthering our understanding of just what the vicissitudes are as the therapist tries to manage this diminution, we most often fall back on its simple injunctive sense: we should not, we say, contaminate our work with these elements of personal subjectivity.
Part of the difficulty lies in the intimacy of the psychotherapeutic activity. Many of us choose this line of work out of a desire to help others, and helping seldom remains merely our business—it becomes our avocation as well. It engages us with these others; it is responsible for our enthusiasm, our labors, our frustration—and, often, our intensest rewards. Helping, in short, fulfills needs of ours, and therefore we can understand it—look at it objectively and define its modes and ways—only at the cost of giving it birth from within ourselves.
This concept of the “helping need” pulls together both aspects of psychotherapy, its rootedness in our own psyche as well as its orientation