ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the psychological functions and relational needs that underlie and are expressed in repetitive fantasizing and the use of the therapeutic relationship in curing obsession. Obsessions, recurring fantasies, rigid behavioral patterns, and habitualized feelings are all maintained by an individual because they provide significant psychological functions. Transference is both an unconscious repetition of the past and an unconscious request in the present for a therapeutically needed relationship. This includes the neglects, traumas, and needs that were thwarted in the process of growing up, as well as the defenses that were created to compensate for the lack of need fulfillment. Countertransference has traditionally been viewed as the psychotherapist’s unfinished business from the past. However, from a relational therapy perspective, countertransference refers to the feelings, images, fantasies, and reactions that a psychologically healthy therapist has as a unique reaction to the unconscious communication of a particular client.
