ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses conceptualizations of countertransference within three major approaches to psychotherapy. The origins of these theoretical systems may be broadly construed as reflecting three primary components of human beings: the physical, the intellectual, and the emotional. The theoretical patterns to which these components correspond, respectively, are the behavioral, psychoanalytic, and humanistic approaches. Of course, transformations within these systems over time have yielded a blending of emphases so that, for instance, the behavioral tradition has incorporated cognitive and, to a lesser degree, emotional elements into its theory. Nonetheless, therapists who work within a theoretical framework that emphasizes action, insight, or emotions may be susceptible to vulnerabilities in one or both of the other areas. As Jung postulated, that which is relegated to the shadow accumulates energy and eventually exerts control over one’s behavior.
