ABSTRACT
A historical perspective is required in order to understand the transformations undergone by the conception of the analyst’s psychic work and countertransference. This chapter focuses on psychoanalytic work, on the psychoanalyst’s mental functioning in the session, and on the decisive changes experienced during the last thirty years. It summarizes that historical transformation, following the thread of substantial modifications in the theoretical conception and technical role of countertransference. The chapter traces three historical phases- Freudian, post-Freudian, and contemporary in the evolution of the analyst’s activity, focusing particularly on the transition from a “totalistic conception” of countertransference, which includes the analyst’s total functioning and is at the core of the post-Freudian clinical model, towards an “integrated conception” of countertransference within a wider, more complex contemporary vision of the analyst’s psychic work, where the notions of frame and “internal frame” are central and countertransference is subordinated to the analyst’s work on representation.
