ABSTRACT
The few times that Freud touched upon the question of countertransference he did so with great reticence and caution – at odds with the ‘love of truth’ which, as he said in Analysis Terminable and Interminable (1937a), ‘precludes any type of sham or deceit’ (p. 248). The fact is that the history of countertransference started post Freud. Our aim here is not to trace the stages of this history, as this is a task others have already taken. Our reading will be short and synchronic: we shall compare texts and authors from different periods, because it is our opinion that on the subject of countertransference certain themes and problems continue to be debated that have been acute since the very beginning. We agree with Turillazzi Manfredi when she argues that countertransference is an open problem and one that is difficult to position in analytic thought.
