ABSTRACT
Class has the potential to evoke extremely charged and difficult emotions; it can be a determining aspect of early experience; some internalized aspects of class experience can be unconscious; and yet there appears to be an absence of frameworks for thought and discussion within the psychotherapy profession. The main concern of this research was with how class and class difference can enter into and contributes to the structuring of the transference–countertransference matrix and how this is perceived, thought about, and worked with by the interviewees. Another starting point was author’s supposition that there is a wealth of unformulated knowledge and experience about class on the part of many psychotherapists that seldom gets reflected in more formal discussions or papers. Psychotherapists from a range of class backgrounds were included since, following Elias (1994), it was thought important to study class as a whole figuration. There are many debates within sociology about the criteria for social class definitions.
