ABSTRACT
E. Glover and M. Brierley’s concept of the therapist’s counterresistance is a useful one in considering the ways in which some of our more affective responses to our patients can be counterproductive. T. Ogden is reinforcing the notion that there are times with hopeless patients when the therapist has to act as a container for hopeful feelings that do not exist within the patient, and there are times when we have to make this conscious for our patients. D. M. Fergusson and L. J. Woodward reported that a history of childhood sexual abuse increased the risk of depression by approximately four times. The attachments form within systems that, at some point in their histories, have been plunged into chaos by trauma. Once established, they tend to coalesce into patterns of relating so inflexible and resistant to change that they profoundly affect parent–child interactions over generations.
