ABSTRACT

Elucidating between all the phantasies that are the product of the countertransference and all the induced by the transference. Sigmund Freudsaid little about countertransference because, at this time, it was a touchy subject linked with political issues related to the therapist’s pathology, and the difficulty finally to accept that therapists should undergo psychoanalytic treatment. P. Heiman and H. Racke introduced a different alternative from that of Freud. They argued that some feelings that patients could elicit in the analyst could create profitable outcomes, because these feelings could allow for further understanding of the patients unconscious phantasy. Racker discriminated between a kind of countertransference he referred to as “concordant”, representing a form of commiseration or empathy towards the patient’s feelings, where his id needs, ego conflicts, and superego demands induce conscious identifications with similar aspects in the analyst.