Foremothers Who Cared: Paula Heimann, Margaret Little and the Female Tradition in Psychoanalysis

Abstract

In 1910, Freud labelled countertransference as pathological, suggesting that analysts either overcome it or quit the profession. It was largely female analysts who, after 40 years of virtual silence on the issue, followed the lead of Paula Heimann and Margaret Little, challenging Freud's anxiety-ridden view and redefining countertransference as an intersubjective mode of relating and a crucial tool of analytic inquiry. This revised view is still questioned by practitioners, many of whom continue to eschew connection and retreat behind Freud's masculine image of the analyst as unemotional and detached. This outmoded analytic ideal hinders contemporary attempts to revise psychoanalysis in feminist terms.

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