Institutional countertransference

The authors present the case of a patient with an institutional transference and point out the existence of institutional countertransference, which confounded his therapy and obscured his potential for change. Confronted with the patient's tradition in the institution, the new therapist had to overcome feelings of unimportance and therapeutic impotence to focus on the patient as a person in his own right. The authors discuss the signs of institutional countertransference and describe how it can seriously hinder clinical assessment of patients with institutional transferences.