Transference and Countertransference

Estudios sobre técnica psicoanalítica (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1960) collects Heinrich Racker's studies of psychoanalytic technique, written in Buenos Aires and published shortly before his death in 1961. The English translation, Transference and Countertransference, appeared in 1968 as no. 73 of the International Psycho-Analytical Library, and a Hebrew translation followed in 2010. The chapters move from the history of technique, classical and present, and the theory of transference, to the analysis of transference through the patient's relation to interpretation, and then to the analyst's side of the encounter: the countertransference neurosis, the meanings and uses of countertransference, the analyst's unconscious masochism and mania, and counterresistance in interpretation. Racker treats transference and countertransference as two sides of a single analytic relationship, each sustaining the other, and defines countertransference broadly, as the analyst's whole response to the patient, including the analyst's own transferences. Distinguishing concordant from complementary identification, he argues that the analyst's emotional reactions are not only an obstacle but can be read as information about the patient's inner world, provided the analyst keeps analysing them. The book was widely influential in Latin America and, alongside the work of Paula Heimann, helped make countertransference a central instrument of analytic technique.