Hate in Countertransference. From Consulting Room to Psychoanalytic Institution

The practice of psychoanalysis places the analyst on strong pressures - the analyst works alone in the consulting room in a medium of isolation, he has to be permanently open to what is coming from the patient, he is emotionally affected by his patients and he has the responsibility to keep and maintain professional boundaries of this relationship. Hate in countertransference could generate a particular conflict in the analyst - conflict between his need to repair, to help his patient, and the hate he feels toward the patient. There is another side of psychoanalysis as a profession, in addition to the clinical practice -the psychoanalytic institutions. Intolerance to diversity, dogmatism and the proneness to schism can be seen as institutional symptoms. Some authors offer explanations from different perspectives - political, sociological, and even religious. The author suggests that in order to understand conflicts in psychoanalytic institutions one must take into account the anonymous psychoanalytic patient who maintains the psychoanalysis as a profession, and argue that hate in countertransference could be seen as one of the sources of conflict between colleagues.