ABSTRACT
The turning-point towards which the concept of countertransference was heading at the end of the 1940s echoed, according to Hanna Segal, the change in the conception of transference, a conception in which the patient projects his/her internal objects not onto but into the analyst, thus influencing him/her. Masud Khan made important and original contributions to psychoanalysis, and to the development of the concept of countertransference as well. From the beginning of the 1980s, the American Stephen Mitchell, who would become one of the principal exponents of the relational approach in psychoanalysis, began to develop his own personal vision of the analytic process, and more in general, of the nature of human experience. This is a vision in which American intersubjectivity enters into dialogue with British object relations. The term 'relational' was deliberately chosen to highlight the link between interpersonal relations and internal object relations.
