ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines how psychoanalytic insights can help mental health professionals in their understanding and management of patients. Staff can benefit from understanding the way these unconscious communications can draw them into responses and actions that bypass the development of meaning and understanding. It can also help to prevent staff from colluding with the part of patients’ minds that wishes to deny their illness. The chapter shows that psychoanalytic supervision expertise is much needed and, indeed, valued by frontline staff. The irritation in the ward manager’s countertransference was due to Mr G’s delinquent attitude towards his illness and his highhanded attitude towards ward staff and patients. The chapter describes how a supervision group discussion helped to free a member of staff from the effects of her countertransference, changed the attitude of the staff towards the patient, and allowed room for some freedom of thought.
