Normal counter-transference and some of its deviations 1

Abstract

Counter-transference is an old psychoanalytic concept which has been widened and enriched. In the narrow sense of an excess of positive or negative feeling, counter-transference is often an indirect result of the frustrations arising when a distressed patient is not understood, and no effective interpretations can be given. For the analyst whose reparative impulse is thwarted of its analytically normal outlet may be unconsciously inclined either to offer some form of love instead, or to become hostile to his patient. Meanwhile, the patient may be facilitating the process by trying to provoke one or other of these affects in his analyst, who is the more likely to respond to his patient's mood just because he has lost his empathy with it. If people were omniscient analysts, the only counter-transference they should experience would be that belonging to those intuitive periods when all is going well.

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