ABSTRACT
The use of countertransference in work with adults with autistic capsules is of fundamental importance, since these people tend to avoid emotional relationships. Autism presents particular problems with using the countertransference. Anne Alvarez points out the importance of intervention based on countertransference response. Alvarez points out that the experience of the newborn in assimilating the messages transmitted by the mother "may have more to do with question of perspective than with question of projection". When the transference is characterized by aggression and closure, the countertransference danger is represented by the analyst's boredom with the patient's rigid obsessive defences and her irritation at the patient's continual expressions of contempt or rejection. The countertransference responses will continually oscillate according to the various levels of transference expression. The only countertransference feeling was of extreme unease, which could only be eased by making some slight allusions to the desperation and solitude she had experienced as a child.
