Concept
Countertransference neurosis
Racker's term for the neurotic part of the analyst's response to the patient, the counterpart of the patient's transference neurosis: Oedipal and pre-Oedipal, paranoid, depressive and manic conflicts revived in the analyst by the analytic relationship, with unreal anxieties and pathological defences that can distort understanding, interpretation and conduct. Racker first set it out to the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association in 1948, and held that even such reactions, once recognised, can serve as tools for understanding the patient.
- Broader concept
- Countertransference
- Introduced by
- Heinrich Racker
- Key works
- 2
introduced by
- Heinrich Racker 1948 Racker's 1948 paper to the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association, 'La neurosis de contratransferencia', published in English in 1953 as 'A Contribution to the Problem of Counter-Transference', traced how the analyst's infantile conflicts persist in a countertransference neurosis. When he returned to the term in 1957 he cited Margaret Little's 1951 paper beside his own.