SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “Countertransference”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 163 records · Page 9Linked to original sources

PubMed1977

Countertransference.

Countertransference can be used as an instrument in understanding the patient's projective identification. An analogy for the patient/therapist interaction is found in Bion's model of the infant's communicating by projection to the breast and the mother as containing and modifying such projections. The particular countertransference problems created by patients who have been objects of massive parental projections are examined. In such cases the patient's projections induce in the analyst diverse experience of past helplessness in relation to projections.

Countertransference↗

PubMed1997

[Countertransference in schizoid disorders].

Twelve experienced psychoanalysts diagnosed during a depth-psychological examination of 604 patients, coming from two different outpatient institutions, distinct clinical schizoid personality traits of 65 patients (10.7%). A further analysis researched the contribution to patient and therapist bindings and influences on the diagnosis. With the aid of a step by step regressions analysis including "solid" patient and therapist data as well as countertransference reactions of the investigator, we were able to establish an accurate diagnostical model, which enables a correct assignment with the probability of 90%. The most important diagnostic criterion proved to be the countertransference of the investigators. This demonstrates that affective processes from the therapist side-should be assessed as a potent criterion that distinctively increases the validity of the diagnosis.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

The vision in supervision: transference-countertransference dynamics and disclosure in the supervision relationship.

The centrality of the supervision experience in the development of the supervisee's personal and professional capacities is addressed. The supervision relationship and process are explored in light of the potential effects of transference-countertransference configurations of supervisor and supervisee. Parallels between supervision and treatment are highlighted. The importance of developing and utilizing the capacity for reflectivity is reviewed, as is the impact of supervisee nondisclosure to supervisor. The direct use of countertransference experiences in the context of supervision is explored, and the centrality of self-disclosure is highlighted. It is recommended that supervisor and supervisee remain receptive to exploring these experiences in the service of developing a shared subjective sense of the patient, of increasing the supervisee's capacity to treat his or her patient, and of providing the supervisee with a novel, growth-enhancing relationship.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

The complexities and pitfalls of working with the countertransference.

The author attempts to demonstrate that the usual manner of reporting countertransference experiences does not do justice to the complexity of these phenomena. Clinical illustrations are used to show that the data of countertransferences are partial, often difficult to use immediately in analyses, sometimes ambiguous, and hard to validate. The fate of persistent conflictual residues within each analyst is discussed in the context of the life cycle of psychoanalytic work.

Countertransference↗

PubMed1995

[Reflections on transference, countertransference, session frequency and the analytic process].

It is suggested that there is a special correlation between the frequency of sessions in psychoanalytical treatment and the nature of the transferences which evolve and, at the same time, of the countertransference responses elicited in the therapist. This in turn has a crucial bearing on the characteristics of the psychoanalytical process which develops in the course of treatment. These interrelationships are explored with special reference to the treatment of children and adolescents. The author draws upon his experiences with high and low frequency treatments to make comparative assessments. On the basis of clinical examples from both analyses and psychotherapies, the effects of these various settings on the development and intensification of the transference are explored. Similarly, the repercussions on the countertransference are discussed. It is suggested that the density, i.e. the temporal proximity of sessions, provides the optimal conditions for the unfolding of the analytical material, the proliferation of fantasies and the emergence of transference derivatives. As for the therapist this setting provides the space that is necessary to gain the most thorough understanding of the patient's inner world, in particular his or her unconscious. Finally, the nature of the psychoanalytical process is discussed as well as the effects which different settings have on the development and quality of this process. It is suggested that different processes evolve in high frequency as against low frequency settings.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1976

Sex-role related countertransference in psychotherapy.

Data from one psychological and one psychiatric agency were collected to determine if psychotherapists' treatment decisions about opposite-sex persons might be influenced by sex-role prescriptions for dealing with sexual impulses. Accordingly, male therapists were hypothesized to prolong and female therapists to avoid treatment situations likely to arouse their sexual curiosities. The results at both facilities provide some support for these notions and, if generalizable, establish sex-role primed countertransference as a factor in patient selection and termination.

Counseling↗

PubMed2001

Erotic overstimulation and the co-construction of sexual meanings in transference-countertransference experience.

This paper attempts to explore the ways in which Western child-rearing practices do not provide an early interpersonal experience in which infantile, sexual, or sensual-erotic experience is held, contained, and given meaning within a safe parent-child dyad. It is the author's basic premise that this normative developmental process fosters a dissociation of unformulated aspects of early sexual and sensual-erotic experience, leaving much of the experience ensconced in unsymbolized and therefore relatively inchoate image, sensation, and affect. The impact of such a dissociation on the patient-analyst relationship is explored, specifically at times when sexual or erotic material begins to impact upon transference-countertransference processes. An extended clinical example is provided.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

On psychotic transference and countertransference.

Following a brief discussion of the primary types of psychotic transferences, viewed from a theoretical position combining ego psychology with an object relations approach, the author presents detailed clinical material illustrating these transferences. The analyst's countertransference in work with such patients is also discussed in depth, including its use as a unique window into the patient's inner world.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Hearing the faith in time: countertransference and religious metaphor in an oncology patient's psychotherapy.

Material from the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of a patient with breast cancer demonstrates the emergence of constructive meaning in areas of psychological experience burdened by conflicts regarding the dimension of time and faith. During analytic work, the spontaneous appearance of religious metaphors revealed deeper layers of memory where time, faith, language, and the sense of being listened to once interacted in ways whose significance could be conceptualized, with the help of the countertransference, as a rediscovery of a hearing breast, or even a sacred hearing breast. Implications for the psychoanalysis of religious experience are discussed.

Breast Neoplasms↗

PubMed2001

Identifying the faces in the mirror: untangling transference and countertransference in self psychology.

Experienced psychotherapists realize that there are many levels of meaning behind much that is said during the therapeutic hour. The challenge for the competent professional is to become wise enough to learn what to ignore and sensitive enough to know what to emphasize. Sorting this out is at the heart of the practice of good psychotherapy. In this article, we will briefly share our thoughts on this rich but complicated interpersonal interaction using Kohutian self psychology theory to understand the role of countertransference in the process of conducting psychotherapy.

Countertransference↗

PubMed2001

Feelings in context: countertransference and the real world in feminist therapy.

The concept of countertransference has been seen as problematic by feminist therapists. However, feminist therapy theory is intensely interested in the symbolic levels of the relationships between therapists and clients, with an emphasis on how the here and now social context informs and transforms those symbols. This article describes a feminist perspective on the therapist's symbolic relationships to clients, and the positive and challenging ramifications of those symbolic encounters.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

An experiential alternative to countertransference.

In an experiential alternative, the therapist and the client attend mainly to a "third thing" throughout the session instead of to one another. A case is presented in which the experiential alternative can offer some new, and perhaps interesting, uses of the therapist's personal reactions in comparison with the uses of countertransference and personal reactions of the therapist when therapist and client attend mainly to one another throughout the session. These new uses are presented and illustrated.

Attention↗

PubMed2001

Clinical implications of research on countertransference: science informing practice.

This article presents a clinically oriented synthesis of research findings pertaining to countertransference (CT). Findings are organized around five therapy-relevant questions concerning the origins, triggers, manifestations, management, and effects of CT. To date, research has focused primarily on impediments posed by therapists' CT reactions and mechanisms for managing them. It is argued that future research needs to be directed toward better understanding how therapists can use CT to enhance their work with clients.

Cognition↗

PubMed2001

Therapist countertransference: in search of common themes and empirical referents.

Throughout this issue on countertransference (CT) and elsewhere, the multiple terms used to describe CT events provide rich conceptual diversity, but also result in theoretical isolation and clinical compartmentalization. Our study and understanding of CT would benefit remarkably if we could agree on empirical-therapist features that any CT conceptualization must target. Subsequent discussions of CT then could specify which of the respective empirical features are being addressed. Accordingly, I offer a descriptive framework that asserts that CT and its hypothesized subtypes (e.g., subjective and objective) can be detected empirically whenever a therapist's experiences and actions with a particular client assume one of several definable "deviations from baseline." If, in our clinical or research pursuits, we are to understand CT, we have to take the time to assess the necessary behavioral baselines for therapists and their clients.

Communication↗

PubMed1982

Reflexivity and countertransference in a psychiatric cultural consultation clinic.

A Mexican-American woman who complained of persistent head pain and a bothersome "voice" was seen by a team consisting of a psychiatrist, social scientists, and spiritualist healers in a Cultural Consultation Clinic of a Psychiatric Consultation Liaison Service. This single case is analyzed to provide an understanding of the interpretive dimensions of psychiatric practice. It is argued that a hermeneutic analysis of clinical phenomena focuses attention on three distinct aspects of interpretation: on the interpretation by clinicians and clients of the discourse of the other in terms of their own clinical models; on the influence of deeply embedded personal meanings on this interpretive process; and on the role of the observer in clinical ethnography. It is argued that to sustain a hermeneutic analysis of psychiatric practice, an account of transference and countertransference in terms of interpretation theory will have to be developed.

Adult↗

PubMed1983

Helping some state hospital mental patients make small but necessary changes: transference openings from countertransference traps.

Severely, chronically mentally ill, poor prognosis, long-term patients in state mental hospitals do succeed in moving out of hospitals into community residences. They succeed by virtue of small but critical behavior changes. For some, these changes in behavior follow a treatment strategy that recognizes and corrects treatment impasses that have developed and been maintained by fixed countertransference positions on the part of hospital staff. In the two case examples presented, the historical information necessary to unravel the transference paradigm was part of routine hospital records, corrective action did not entail any major staff interventions, improved behavior led directly to movement out of the hospital, and community adjustment was successful. Improved mental and behavioral functioning was sustained at a year and a half follow-up.

Adult↗

PubMed1988

Countertransference envy toward the religious patient.

Four illustrations have been presented which demonstrate the uses and interpretations of envy in countertransference reactions to religious patients. To be sure, envy reactions to any patient are significant, whether they simply distort the therapist's perception or contribute to a deeper understanding of the patient. In the case of the religious patient, envy reactions in the therapist may serve as an additional instrumentality for under-standing the ways in which the dynamic determinants of religious behavior and metaphor become enmeshed in and also transform the pathology of the patient as well as the therapeutic process itself. Both the constructive and destructive object relational implications of envy must be borne in mind by the therapist in order to adequately explore the range of reciprocating forces between therapist and patient. Primitive mechanisms such as projective identification and psychotic transference are particularly prone to evoke envy reactions of surprising intensities, yet an empathic attitude will usually enable the therapist to differentiate the true source of his envy as he more carefully comprehends the quality of object relational and dynamic needs such envy serves.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1992

Voice of a hidden minority: identification and countertransference in the cross-cultural working alliance.

This paper has expanded the psychoanalytical definition of the working alliance to include the influence of culture. The cross-cultural working alliance is a therapeutic dyad that incorporates a psychotherapist and a patient of dissimilar backgrounds. Each participant enters the alliance with cultural introjects--values, attitudes, and ways of behaving that stem from ethnocultural roots. These introjects influence the intrapsychic world, shape the conscious worldview, and the perception of life experience. The influence of cultural predispositions on the psychopathologies of the patients was prominent in two case examples: a black West Indian male and a Korean-American male. The therapist also brought cultural predispositions to her work. A constructive countertransference phenomenon occurred in the working alliance that had a direct connection to its cross-cultural nature. This phenomenon is called associative identification--the conscious identification of therapist with the ego experience of patient. With the use of the associative identification, the therapist uncovered parallel memories that promoted theoretical understanding and informed therapeutic technique. Just as anthropologists claim that cultures share universal institutional patterns, it is proposed that universal cultural conflicts may also be observed in the cross-cultural working alliance. The analyst and patients in this study had two culture-conflicts in common: the longing to be seen, and the pull for disidentification. It is concluded that associative identification enriched the reparative quality of treatment, and encouraged the integration of isolated, split-off parts of the self.

Adult↗