[Countertransference problems with suicidal patients in inpatient psychiatric treatment]

Transference is an effective protection against suicidal impulses of psychiatric patients. However, suicidal patient's highly ambivalent attempts at establishing a relationship with the therapist lead to significant transference and countertransference problems. During the course of therapy the therapist often is used as a selfobject, an experience that alters the narcissistic equilibrium. Suicidal patients create a selfobject transference by means of attacks on the therapist similar to those they themselves had experienced in their childhoods. The hidden attacks are very troublesome to the therapist's own feeling of selfworth and his state of self may be changed in the sense of a selfobject countertransference.