Transference is possibly one of the most studied concepts in Psychoanalysis.

It has
never been outside controversies due its intense affective nature, being a troublesome
obstacle in the analytic process. The other side of this coin, counter-transference, poses a
similar problem to analysts. In a first stage, Freud regarded it as an impediment to clinical
practice. However, the following generations of analysts considered counter-transference as
an essential part of their practice. It is worth asking then what occurred during the
development of the psychoanalytic theory that the use of concept of counter-transference
notably changed. Additionally, it would be relevant to explore how this notion is used by
contemporary psychoanalysts. This paper will describe the changes on the theory of
counter-transference and a particular contemporary use of it. It will show that countertransference nowadays would be a multidimensional analytic tool, which comprises the
history of the theoretical psychoanalytic frameworks.

Development of the concept of counter-transference

The concept of counter-transference explicitly refers to a major psychoanalytic
notion: transference. Initially, Freud (1895) described it as an obstacle to the treatment, in
which a patient would compulsorily transfer disturbing ideas on to the physician as a
consequence of the analysis, creating an illusion of the relationship with him (pp.302-304).
A decade later, Freud refined his early definition by saying that transferences are new
editions or facsimiles of the impulses and phantasies which are aroused and made
conscious during the progress of the analysis; but they have this peculiarity, [] they
replace some earlier person by the person of the physician. (Ibid, 1905, pp.116). As
Laplanche & Pontalis (1973) noticed, these Freudian formulations carry the concepts of

resistance and displacement, implying that transference was something to be analysed and
overcame as any other symptom (Freud, 1895, pp.303).
Nevertheless, his approach changed as result of his clinical experience. Instead of
being an impediment for analysis, the work on transference became the main tool for
psychoanalytic cure (Freud, 1912). Transference would be comprehended now as the
patients repetition of a part of their forgotten past on the doctor and all other aspects of the
analytic situation, in which the extensibility of the repetition would give account on the
intensity of the resistance (Ibid, 1914, pp.151). In this way, Freud argued that the
psychoanalytic treatment would be the playground in which the patients hidden instincts
would be re-enacted and worked-through (Ibid, pp.155).
Having in mind the previous description, it is now possible to propose a definition
for counter-transference. Freud (1910) referred to it only few times, mentioning that it
arises in the analyst as a result of the patients influence on his unconscious feelings
(pp.114). Thus it could be said that transference is to the patient as counter-transference is
to the analyst. Both psychoanalytic concepts share the same origin as a resistance (Ibid,
1910, pp.101), but counter-transference would have to be recognised and solved by analysts
in their own analysis (Ibid; Ibid, 1913, pp.112). Moreover, a non-analysed countertransference could jeopardise the analysts neutrality and, therefore, the patients analysis
(Ibid, 1915, pp.164). In this sense, saying that Freud regarded counter-transference as an
impediment could be an accurate statement. Finally, as opposed to transference, countertransference did not suffer any modification in his theory.
A large number of analysts followed this technical view, including Melanie Klein.
Although she never published an article on the matter, Spillius (2007) found evidence of
her views on counter-transference. Klein argued that it never helped her to understand her
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patients better rather it helped to understand herself (Ibid, pp.78). Additionally, Klein
clearly differentiated between her affective responses from her wish to know1 (Ibid,
pp.79). For instance, if a male patients behaviour caused her to feel very annoyed, she
would think about the reasons behind his actions wish to know instead of analysing her
emotions (Ibid). Having this in mind, it could be argued that Kleins implicitly stated that
analysts should be able to inhibit their feelings (Ibid, pp.110), which would be possible only
through analysis. From this point of view, Klein was possibly truly Freudian (Ibid, pp.54).
A turning point in the theorisation of counter-transference occurred around 1950.
On the one hand, Winnicott (1949) mentioned that counter-transference sometimes could be
useful to understand and interpret unconscious processes in severe patients. In particular, he
remarked that some patients look to engender emotional responses in the analyst, making
necessary the analysis of counter-transference as part of their work (Ibid, pp.72-73). Giving
account of a severe patient who was looking to generate hate in him, Winnicott was able to
determinate the importance of the recognition of his own hate in order to interpret the
analytic relationship (Ibid, pp.72). Using this vignette, he posed that the analysts emotional
response to the patient is a healthy part of the analytic process, emphasising the analysts
capacity to hold their feelings and their objective use in favour of the treatment2 (Ibid,
pp.74).
On the other hand, in her famous paper on the matter, Paula Heimann (1950) stated
that counter-transference refers to all the feelings which the analyst experiences towards
his patient (pp.81). In contrast to Klein, Heimann (Ibid.) proposed that it is an instrument
1 She could be making a reference to the desire for knowledge (Klein, 1922) or to the
analysts epistemophilic instinct (Klein, 1923).
2 This could be linked to what Freud (1913) said to Binswanger: what we give to the
patient should, however, be a spontaneous affect, but measured out consciously at all times,
to a greater or lesser extent according to need (pp.112)
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to research the patients unconscious and, therefore, one of the most important tools of the
analyst. Moreover, she suggested that the analysts immediate emotional response is a part
of the patients personality (Ibid, pp.83). As example, she described an episode where she
felt worried about a patients wish to marry an injured friend. She described that her
unconscious feelings of concern about the patients behaviour were in her before the
conscious understanding of the problem, which helped her to listen the clinical material in
different way (Ibid). Although she advised the analysts own analysis similarly to Freud and
Klein, Heimann stressed the facilitation of analysts free roused emotional sensibility and
the distinction between their own feelings and those from the patient (Ibid).
Her proposal was tremendously controversial. Klein was very concern about the
possible consequences of using counter-transference as an analytic tool (Hinshelwood,
1991; Spillius, 2007, pp.53-54). Specifically, understanding it as a part of the patients
personality could lead to interpret every emotional response in the analyst as a part of their
analysands (Faimberg, 1992, pp.542). However, Heimann opened a research field left aside
by Freud and Klein, rescuing counter-transference as a helpful concept in clinical practice
(Ibid). A vast number of analysts have recognised its usefulness and deepened on its
understanding (Little, 1951; Rosenfeld, 1952; Racker, 1953; Money-Kyrle, 1956; Reich,
1960; Segal, 1977). Thus it could said that analyst were divided in two groups according to
their use of counter-transference: those who did not considered it useful in their clinical
practice following Freud, and a movement who saw a theoretical and technical value
concept in it.
Amongst the authors of this second group, Bion stands due its relevance. In his
work with schizophrenics, Bion discovered that the verbal communication of schizoid
patients was different from neurotics (Bion, 1955, pp.77). In some cases, it was almost not
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existent. For this reason, the only evidence in which he could base his interpretations was
his counter-transference (Ibid). Although Bion rescued Heimanns concept of countertransference as an indicator of the patients unconscious (Hinshelwood, 1991), the lack of
verbal communication led him to develop a new understanding of the analytic relationship.
To solve this issue, Bion incorporated the concept of projective identification (Ibid, pp.78).
Following Klein (1946), he proposed that it refers to the mechanism by which parts of the
personality are split off and projected into external objects (Bion, 1967, pp.138). In this
way, the patient would project parts of himself sane and/or insane into the analyst (Ibid,
1955, pp.78), as a form of unconscious communication3. To illustrate this, he described a
session with a schizophrenic patient (Ibid, pp.77). After 20 minutes of silent, Bion was able
to determine unconscious feelings of fear within himself, which were not supported by the
patients behavior. Only when he had enough evidence through the analysis of his
unconscious feelings, Bion was able to make an interpretation.
His approach to counter-transference had an immense impact in the psychoanalytic
movement. Bions ideas were adopted by several analysts (Money-Kyrle, 1958; Grinberg,
1963; Searles, 1963, Rosenfeld, 1987), who use them to interpret the transference in their
practice. However, it is worth noticing here that Bion was very cautious about this use of
counter-transference. He claimed that it would have to be used as a last resort (Bion, 1955,
pp.77). Even further, Bion warned about the analysts incapacity to rapidly comprehend it
due its unconscious quality (Ibid, 1977, pp.245, pp.269). He also encouraged analysts to
deal with their counter-transferences in their own analysis and learn something for

3 This concept is clearly bound to Freuds idea of unconscious communication between the
patient and the analyst (Freud, 1912, pp.116).
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themselves (Ibid, pp.270-271). In this sense, it could be said that Bion positioned himself in
a middle point between Klein and Heimann.
A similar but more critical conclusion was made by Lacan. From a different
tradition, he suggested that counter-transference is the sum total of the analyst's biases,
passions, and difficulties, or even of his inadequate information, at any given moment in
the dialectical process (Lacan, 1951, pp.183). Although Lacan critiques the use of
counter-transference by the object-relations authors (Ibid, 1956, pp.387-388), the latter
formulation rescues its value as participant in the dialectical analytic process. Comparing it
to the position of the dummy in the game of bridge, Lacan stated that counter-transference
is an useful element who passively informs the analyst of the analysands plays, helping
the first to design a strategy for the treatment (Ibid, 1958, pp.492-493). Paraphrasing, the
analyst is aware of their feelings, but does not use them actively (Bailly, 2009).
In summary, this account of the concept of counter-transference could be
categorised in at least three different points of view. In first place, a theoretical stream who
suggests that counter-transference is a problem of the analyst and has no clinical value. A
second approach, which proposes that it is an useful technical tool, relates it directly to the
patients part of the personality, and gives it an active role in the analytic process. Finally, a
third movement who states that counter-transference is also a helpful element in the
analyst-analysand dialect relationship, but its role is passive and informative in relation to
the unconscious dynamics present in the treatment.

Counter-transference position A contemporary approach

As it could be deducted from the previous discussion, Faimberg (1992) noticed that
counter-transference has been discussed in a wide range of contexts and is not an
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unequivocal concept (pp.541). Additionally, she recognised the importance of having this
theoretical notion to avoid technical errors (Ibid, pp.542). For these reasons, she considered
necessary to formulate a more elastic and broader concept: the counter-transference
position.
Faimberg (1992) defines this formulation as all the psychical activity of the
analyst intended to restore what corresponds to the history of the transference (pp.542),
which depends on dialectical causality (Ibid).
This proposition could be separated in two parts: the analysts overall psychic
activities, and the dialectical causality. On the one hand, the first integrates the Freudian
idea of unconscious feelings, Winnicotts objective affects and analysts immediate
emotional response suggested by Heimann. However, the emphasis placed on
dissymmetrical positions of both analyst and patient excludes thereby the communication
of the affective state of the first (Ibid, pp.541-542). Additionally, it is in the analysts
psychical activity where he gets his bearings in relation to his counter-transference
(Faimberg, 1992, pp.542), following authors such as Heimann, Grinberg, Bion and Segal.
But, as opposed to them, Faimberg poses that the analysis of the counter-transference
would be the result of a dialectical relationship between different factors (Ibid). In this way,
she positions herself closer to Lacan by conceiving it as a phenomena that occurs between
two actors and not only as result of the patients unconscious mechanisms.
On the other hand, the subject of dialectical causality refers simultaneously to the
patient, the analyst, and their relationship. In this way, the counter-transference position
comprises the ideas of the analysts neurosis, the patients transference and projective
identification, the propriety and enactment of the emotional responses from both parties,
and how the analyst uses and elaborates it (Faimberg, 1992, pp.542-543). It could be argued
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that this formulation allows analysts to be more flexible in their approach to countertransference, by not attaching themselves to a specific explanation of their unconscious
feelings but to a multidimensional interaction between factors. In other words, countertransference would not have a single cause. Moreover, the concept of dialectical causality
allows to consider how the analyst construct their own elaboration of an unconscious
feeling, which Faimberg theorised as counter-transference symptom (Ibid, pp.544)
To illustrate these ideas, Faimberg (1992, pp. 544) described a situation that
occurred with a patient. After repetitive psychical absences, she noticed that there was
something happening to her which corresponded to counter-transference. She discovered
that her psychical absence concealed unpleasure feeling, which was not necessarily be
correlated to the patient. In this sense, how the analyst elaborates an unconscious feeling is
determined by his own subjectivity and not necessarily analogues to the patients
experience. In Faimbergs vignette, her absence was her counter-transference symptom
against unpleasure. As a consequence of this realisation, she was able to determinate a state
of narcissistic self-sufficiency in both analyst and patient, which was interpreted.

Conclusions
There was an impressive change in how psychoanalysts approached to the concept
of counter-transference. Although Freud considered it an impediment to the analytic work,
analysts such as Heimann, Winnicott, Bion, and Lacan considered it an essential part of the
psychoanalytic process. From different psychoanalytic frameworks, each one of them
emphasised different aspects of the notion of counter-transference. However, it could be
said that there was not theoretical interchange between them.

Nowadays, there could be a tendency to integrate those approaches and use a more
flexible concept. Faimbergs counter-transference position encompasses essential ideas of
these various analysts and psychoanalytic traditions. This concept would allow
psychoanalysts to have a multidimensional tool to approach to patients and themselves in
the analytic situation. Nevertheless, this theorisation would implicitly require analysts,
following Freud, to pursue self-analysis to gain the necessary flexibility in their own minds.
At the end, the psychoanalysts body and mind4 are their own tool of work.

4 Or the analysts personality according to Reik (1943, in Lederman, 1990)

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