ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates what might be a helpful way of defining and conceptualising the unconscious emotional responses, such as the countertransference of the teachers, within the classroom setting. It discusses the countertransference of teachers in the school setting in terms of mourning and learning. The chapter focuses on countertransference within the student–teacher relationship. Transferential response is a concept used exclusively for teaching and learning situations to distinguish from the “clinical countertransference”, where the former relates to the intense emotional teacher–student interactions. As Celia Hunt points out, psychoanalytically trained specialists will be able to use their countertransferences to, potentially, reach a deeper understanding of unconscious aspects of the emotional life of the institution. Maltepe University are pioneers in the area of psychoanalytic pedagogy in Turkey. The impact of the Istanbul Psychoanalytic Study Group linked with the International Psychoanalysis Association and founded in 1994 as the Istanbul Psychoanalysis Group has an important role in this process.
