Concerning Transference and Countertransference

Abstract

This paper is presented primarily for its historical interest. The author's first attempted publication in psychiatry or psychoanalysis, it was submitted successively to two publications in 1949, rejected by each, and filed away until now. In it, the author suggests that transference phenomena constitute projections, and that all projective manifestations—including transference reactions—have some real basis in the analyst's behavior and represent, therefore, distortions in degree only. The latter of these two suggestions implies a degree of emotional participation by the analyst which is not adequately described by the classical view of him as manifesting sympathetic interest, and nothing else, toward the patient. It has been the writer's experience that the analyst actually does feel, and manifest in various ways, a great variety of emotions during the analytic hour. The analytic usefulness of this actual richness of emotional participation, by the analyst, is detailed.

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Notes on contributors

Harold F. Searles

Harold F. Searles, M.D. (1918-2015) was one of the pioneers of psychiatric medicine specializing in psychoanalytic treatments of borderline conditions and schizophrenia. He had the reputation of being a therapeutic maverick who was of ten able to make contact with difficult to reach patients.  His books included: The Nonhuman Environment in Normal Development and in Schizophrenia; Papers on Schizophrenia and Related Subjects; Countertransference and related subjects; My Work With Borderline Patients.