ABSTRACT

After I read Winnicott’s “Hate in the countertransference” (1947) the world would never be the same. I could not hear “Rockabye baby” (or sing it to a child or, now, a grandchild) without thinking of the ambivalence buried in it. More than that, and worse than that, never could I think seriously about love again—much less about countertransference—without knowing that however good and pure and whole an attachment feels, it’s likely that something in it will be swimming the other way.