ABSTRACT
The Boston psychoanalyst Larry Strasburger contributed this paper as a chapter in William Reid’s book, Unmasking the Psychopath, in 1986. Building on the work of John Lion and Gerald Adler, he empathically captures the therapist’s feelings when attempting treatment of an antisocial person. Strasburger first defines the requisite “maturity” necessary for such work and then elucidates six countertransference responses: fear of assault or harm, helplessness and guilt, loss of professional identity, denial of danger, rejection of the patient, and the rageful wish to destroy. This is a clinically rich and sophisticated, yet realistic paper that captures the sometimes frozen, and often frightening, landscape of therapeutic engagement with a psychopathically disturbed patient.
