The complexities and pitfalls of working with the countertransference

The author attempts to demonstrate that the usual manner of reporting countertransference experiences does not do justice to the complexity of these phenomena. Clinical illustrations are used to show that the data of countertransferences are partial, often difficult to use immediately in analyses, sometimes ambiguous, and hard to validate. The fate of persistent conflictual residues within each analyst is discussed in the context of the life cycle of psychoanalytic work.