ABSTRACT
Leston Havens, a Harvard psychoanalyst who has written extensively about working with very ill psychiatric patients, has observed this kind of perceptual empathy in his work with severely psychotic patients. In addition, working with psychotic patients, who often organize their own perceptual experiences according to the dictates of affect, may tend to pull more frequently for this kind of perceptual affect transmission in the therapist. Otto Kernberg, a well-known analyst and researcher of borderline personality disturbed patients, has noted that these patients tend to induce strong and often primitive emotional responses in the therapist. Dr. Tony Potter unusual and disturbing experiences while treating Amy Mills fall under the general heading of the therapist’s response to the patient. Insofar as these responses were outside Tony’s control or initial awareness, they can be considered countertransference. Tony suspected that his countertransference misperceptions and sensations were part of a transference-countertransference reverberation.
