ABSTRACT
This chapter explores in particular, difficult countertransference feelings such as anxiety, guilt, and shame. Countertransference phenomena illuminate how unconscious processes may enhance or interfere with the therapeutic relationships between infant, parent, and therapist. Countertransference is a most helpful guide to what is occurring and we need over a lifetime to increasingly develop receptiveness in the countertransference to projections of infant and parent. With parents who were dismissing, therapists tended to have predominantly negative feelings of boredom, irritation, and indifference. A countertransference enactment is an important element in understanding the clinical process. The chapter conceptualises the role of the countertransference in becoming aware of the perceptions inside their mind, both therapist and also parent and infant. It endures for the length of time that it takes to recognise the early warning signs, and to link the specific qualities of the feelings.
