ABSTRACT
In 1947, Donald W. Winnicott presented his paper 'Hate in Countertransference' – the result of his work experience with borderline and psychotic patients. Despite the pioneering work of the analysts, countertransference had a similar fate to that of transference, for it was considered for years to be the blind spot of the analyst, an error of technique whose interpretation was believed to be dangerous, and therefore to be avoided. Up until 1950 not much was written about countertransference, and the little that was written hardly deviated from some conceptions of Sigmund Freud, or more exactly from a 'narrow' and 'rigid' reading of the papers on technique written by the Master. The first detailed publication on the use of countertransference was that of Paula Heimann in 1950. Much as in the classical view, the analyst should maintain a position of relative objectivity in the disclosure of the countertransference.
