ABSTRACT
The analyst's countertransference feelings of love, particularly sexual love, have been subject to minimal examination in the literature. In this era of expanding psychoanalytical models, it appears that some theories of therapeutic action lend themselves more to addressing such themes than do others. Harold Searles's pioneering work is a noteworthy exception, though his focus on schizophrenic patients somewhat allows his work to be viewed as out of the mainstream and therefore not entirely relevant to more everyday analytic experience. Heinrich Racker, in his classic writing on the transference-countertransference matrix, also frequently refers to analyst's reciprocal feelings of love in response to patient's loving engagement in the transference. Romantic and sexual countertransference feelings in particular are indeed a delicate theme, although such feelings in the transference have obviously been absolutely central since the first moments of psychoanalysis. As Racker has noted, the Classical psychoanalytic position always views the child as initiator of oedipal sexuality.
