Community analysis: A case study examining transference and countertransference in community intervention

Abstract

This paper addresses the integration of community psychology and psychoanalytic theory through an exploration of transference-countertransference interactions and enactments that occurred in the context of a community intervention. The author, a team member during a four-year community revitalization intervention in South Central Los Angeles, calls this approach community analysis and offers a way to conceptualize the transference-countertransference themes that developed there in the interactive patterns between community residents and the intervention staff. Examples are given to illustrate how the interactive patterns represented deeply entrenched transference dilemmas that residents enacted with external power sources, including the intervention team, and how this understanding provided necessary leverage for growth and change in the community.

Keywords:

• Community character
• community psychology
• enactment
• interpersonal psychoanalysis
• point of impact

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Drs. Eve Golden, Roger Mills, and Raymond Lorion for contributing their support, wisdom, and suggestions on this article.

Notes

Selective inattention and dissociation are operations that exclude from awareness experiences that have been associated with anxiety. The result of these processes is that the experience of anxiety is diminished and perceived security is enhanced. Such experiences are not available in awareness for realistic perception and processing, so they interfere with the ability to learn successfully and to adapt from experience (5,6).