ABSTRACT
We have earlier drawn attention to the inseparable nature of transference and countertransference in the `dance' that evolves between therapist and client. An integrative psychotherapist needs to be able to conceptualize this intersubjective and relational process while at the same time making decisions based on their own response to the client as the relationship unfolds. The therapist also needs to think about the difference between countertransference and pretransference since the latter has been highlighted as pointing to the tension between a perspective based in issues of equality and social constructionism and one based in the exploration of intrapsychic and interpersonal processes (Curry, 1964). The evolvement of the countertransference concept in psychoanalytic psychotherapy has been signi®cant. From the beginnings where the mainstream notion of countertransference was regarded as an interference we have progressed though Heimann's challenge (Heimann, 1950) about the importance of the therapist's response to the client to the more current recognition that the therapist's countertransference and its expression can play a signi®cant part in facilitating a good outcome for the therapy (Maroda, 1991 inter alia). Maroda argues that the purpose of a useful therapeutic relationship is to go beyond the establishment of a good working relationship and be able to contain and develop a more dynamic con¯ict in the interests of working through some of the dif®culties that the client has come to therapy to resolve. What is important here is the tension between a possible re-enactment of a dysfunctional dynamic and the possibility that the therapist, through the judicious use of their own aware reactions to the client, can support a different outcome than was previously the case, thus creating an expanded awareness and a wider selection of choiceful possibilities in human interaction.
