ABSTRACT
Winnicott’s view was that the therapist must come to tolerate his own negative feelings towards patients in order to be effective. Further, the clinician’s defense structure, which has so much potential for latent countertransference dislike, requires continual and vigilant self-analysis to clarify and detoxify these aggressive affects. The therapist often likes one partner more than the other and this identification shifts between sessions and even within a single session. If the therapist is having trouble expressing anger, the partner who is more comfortable with doing this may be disliked by the therapist or intimidating to the therapist. Just as in individual therapies, the therapist has countertransference feelings and reactions; the couple therapist has those feelings to each partner and to the relationship as a whole.
