ABSTRACT
Counter-transference is a psychoanalytic concept which made its full appearance in the fifties. The Kleinians who questioned the counter-transference found, in their way, a finer articulation than that which leads inevitably to the dual confrontation. Jacques Lacan spoke of the counter-transference with regard to Sigmund Freud in the case of Dora and defined it as the sum of prejudices, and even errors; a lack of information, that is to say, the lack of certain signifiers coming from the analysand. Lacan’s position ends in a reabsorption of the category of counter-transference. The depression of the psychoanalyst is presented then as an effect of shortsightedness with respect to the location that he occupies, and of his incomprehension of the patient’s unconscious: it is the traumatism of misunderstanding. The identification with defeat in the failure of the parental drive is the depressive position of the psychoanalyst.
