I want to point out that countertransference is an aspect of projective identification. In the countertransference relationship, the patient puts something into the therapist which the therapist experiences as his or her own. That's not a bad definition of one of the forms of projective identification, in which the patient splits off an unacceptable or undesirable (or otherwise uncontainable) part of the self and puts it into another person. That person must have, if only to a very small degree, the potential to identify with and express that feeling. It rises up from the general repertoire of that person’s potential feelings and gets exaggerated and expressed. The projector can then feel: 'It's not me; it's him', while the process of identification in the recipient may yield a bewildering feeling, reaction or act (Hinshelwood, 1991, pp. 179-208). In an attentive therapist, interrogating the countertransference leads to a fruitful interpretation.
Monday, December 16, 2013
This is what you are doing MT, you don’t need my apology…
