Erotized Transference Reconsidered: Expanding the Countertransference Dimension

Transference can no longer be regarded as simply the re-enactment in the psychoanalytic situation of past relationships or as the re-experiencing of childhood events that distort one's capacity to perceive present reality. The contemporary view places emphasis on transference as a new experience while not discounting influences of the past. The analyst, from this perspective, rather than being an objective, detached observer, is a co-participant whose personality has a major impact on transference behaviors. The mutual interplay of the two participants of the analyst-patient dyad has been persuasively argued for in a number of contributions. The works of Atwood and Stolorow (1984), Epstein and Feiner (1979), Gill (1982), Levenson (1983, 1987), and Schwaber (1979) are representative of efforts to delineate the complex, multilayered nature of transference. Held in common by these writers is the relative emphasis given to transference as a construction in the here-and-now of the psychoanalytic situation rather than as solely a reconstruction of the past.

In spite of the fact that this interactive view of transference has been cogently presented over a period of many years, with its conceptual roots in the early work of Rank and Ferenczi, its acceptance has hardly achieved the level of unanimity. Published case reports frequently emphasize the role of the neutral analyst as an observer and interpreter of the intrapsychic world of the patient with little attention to the intricacies of the interpersonal encounter. Since case reports are abbreviated and disguised to begin with, the more subtle aspects of the interplay of transference and countertransference are