Article
A Contribution to the Problem of Counter-Transference
Racker’s paper, first read in Spanish to the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association in 1948 and published in English in 1953, argues that the analyst’s countertransference deserves the same systematic study as the patient’s transference. The analyst is at once the interpreter of the patient’s unconscious processes and an object of them, and since analysis never leaves the analyst wholly free of neurosis, their whole personality, healthy and neurotic, enters the analytic situation. Racker calls the pathological part of this response the “countertransference neurosis” and, as with any neurosis, traces it to the Oedipus complex: in its positive form, erotic attachment to the female patient as mother, a wish to keep her bound, and rivalry with her partner; in its negative form, a wish to be loved by the male patient, satisfied by his compliance and turned to hatred by his resistance. Drawing on vignettes, mostly from candidates, he shows how the analyst’s dependence on internal objects, re-projected onto supervisors, the analytic group or the patient, turns therapeutic and scientific success into a matter of castration anxiety and guilt, against which the analyst mobilises paranoid, depressive and manic defences, such as blaming the patient. He attributes the scant literature on the subject to analysts’ own resistance and asks that countertransference be investigated with every means psychoanalysis has.
Main ideas
- The analyst is both the interpreter of the patient’s unconscious processes and an object of them; countertransference can help or distort understanding, and through the analyst’s tone, timing and attitude it shapes the patient’s transference.
- Being analysed does not free the analyst from neurosis: the analyst’s whole personality takes part in the analytic situation, and its pathological part forms a “countertransference neurosis”.
- The scarcity of writing on countertransference reflects analysts’ resistance: the shame of admitting that an analysed person who analyses others remains neurotic.
- Like any neurosis, the countertransference neurosis centres on the Oedipus complex, in its positive form (love for the female patient as mother, rivalry with her partner) and its negative form (the wish to be loved by the male patient, frustrated by his resistance).
- Neurotic countertransference reactions may be sporadic, but the predisposition to them is constant; it varies between analysts, from hour to hour and across periods of life.
- The analyst’s dependence on internal objects, re-projected onto supervisors, the analytic group or the patient, makes therapeutic and scientific success a matter of castration anxiety and guilt, met with paranoid, depressive and manic defences.
- When the analyst answers the patient’s resistance with anger, they fall into the trap set by the patient’s neurosis, which casts the analyst as the frustrating internal object.
- The analyst should examine and master their own emotional state before interpreting, and the pathological part of countertransference should be investigated with all the means of psychoanalysis.
What it shows
- 1948
Heinrich Racker introduced Countertransference neurosis
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.
External links
In English
- Amazon(opens the store’s page in a new tab)
- Amazon(opens the store’s page in a new tab)
- Routledge(opens the store’s page in a new tab)
- Routledge(opens the store’s page in a new tab)