Article
The Meanings and Uses of Countertransference
What it shows
- 1957
Heinrich Racker introduced Concordant identification
Racker named the analyst's identification of each part of his personality with the corresponding part of the patient's (ego with ego, id with id, superego with superego) 'concordant' or 'homologous' identification. He did so in 'The Meanings and Uses of Countertransference', read to the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association in 1953 and published in 1957.
- 1957
Heinrich Racker introduced Complementary identification
Racker named the analyst's identification with the patient's internal objects 'complementary identification', adapting an expression of Helene Deutsch's. The analyst comes to feel treated as the object the patient projects onto him. He did so in 'The Meanings and Uses of Countertransference' (read 1953, published 1957).
- 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.
- 1948
Heinrich Racker developed Countertransference
From his 1948 papers to the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association onward, Racker treated countertransference as a technical instrument for understanding the patient as well as a danger. In 1957 he argued for taking it as the totality of the analyst's psychological response, within which concordant and complementary identifications are distinguished. He reached this independently of Paula Heimann, who was working along similar lines.
- 1957
Helene Deutsch influenced Heinrich Racker
Racker took the name of his 'complementary identifications' from Helene Deutsch, who had spoken of a 'complementary position' for the analyst's identifications with the object imagoes.