Countertransference and Role-Responsiveness

As we know, the term 'countertransference' has a great many meanings, just as the term 'transference' has. Freud first saw countertransference as referring to the analyst's blind spots which presented an obstacle to the analysis. From the beginning, countertransference was consistently seen by Freud 'as an obstruction to the freedom of the analyst's understanding of the patient. ' In this context Freud regarded the analyst's mind as an 'instrument . , its effective functioning in the analytic situation being impeded by countertransference'. Countertransference in the analyst was equated with the resistance in the patient (Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1973). As far as transference is concerned, it will be remembered that Freud saw it first as a hindrance, but later regarded it as an indispensable vehicle for the analytic work. However, he did not take a similar step in regard to countertransference, but this inevitable step was taken after Freud. It was a crucial development in the psychoanalytic literature when the countertransference 'began to be seen as a phenomenon of importance in helping the analyst to understand the hidden meaning of material brought by the patient. The essential idea . is that the analyst has elements of understanding and appreciation of the processes occurring in his patient, that these elements are not immediately conscious and that they can be discovered by the analyst if he monitors his own mental associations while listening to the patient' (Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1973). The first explicit statement of the positive value of countertransference was made by Paula Heimann (1950). Others have written on and developed the topic. However, the two papers by Paula Heimann (1950), (1960)have to be singled out as landmarks in the change of view of countertransference. She started by considering countertransference as referring to all the feelings which the analyst may experience towards his patient. Heimann remarks that the analyst has to be able to 'sustain the feelings which are stirred up in him, as opposed to discharging them (as does the patient), in order to subordinate them to the analytic task in which he functions as the patient's mirror reflection'. She assumes 'that the analyst's unconscious understands that of his patient. This rapport on the deep level comes to the surface in the form of feelings which the analyst notices in response to his patient, in his "countertransference"' (Heimann, 1950). I shall not mention the other important writings in this field, except to say that, of course, countertransference had been written about before Heimann's work and it had been pointed out that countertransference is a normal phenomenon. But what seems to have been stressed has been the differences between what one might call the 'appropriate' and 'useful' countertransference on the one hand and the 'dangerous' or 'undesirable' countertransference response on the other. Heimann's contribution was to show clearly that the reaction of the analyst may usefully be the first clue to what is going on in the patient. In The Patient and the Analyst the literature on transference was discussed in some detail (Sandler, Dare & Holder, 1973) and we concluded by commenting that, in our view, . transference need not be restricted to the illusory apperception of another person . , but can be taken to include the unconscious (and often subtle) attempts to manipulate or to provoke situations with