Obstacle or quintessence? Sándor Ferenczi on countertransference

Today the concept of countertransference is widely considered to have a transtheoretical status. Although it in fact originated in the psychoanalytical tradition, being coined by Freud himself, the concept is hardly mentioned is his published work. Given Freud's rather ambivalent or negative appreciation of countertransference phenomena, this comes as no surprise. Countertransference is generally agreed to have taken centre stage from the end of World War One onwards. Although countertransference became a mandatory research topic after the 1950s, not all post-Freudians were as enthusiastic about its analytical relevance.