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Countertransference is when a therapist’s feelings towards a client are influenced by someone they know or knew. This can be positive or negative, but negative countertransference can harm the client. However, some believe that some countertransference is inevitable and can lead to positive effects in therapy.
Countertransference is a psychoanalytic concept that refers to how a clinician’s feelings about a client are altered when the client reminds the clinician of someone they know or knew. The clinician or therapist may develop personal feelings, such as attraction or hatred, toward the client because of those associations between the client and the person the clinician knew or knows. These feelings, while often discussed in their most negative connotations, can also have a positive impact on therapy.
Sigmund Freud first came up with the concept of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century. This psychological approach is generally based on the analysis of subconscious thoughts and childhood memories. During psychoanalysis, a psychoanalyst typically interviews a client in an attempt to uncover any childhood memories that have impacted current feelings or emotional problems. As the psychoanalyst begins to help the client relive those past memories or evoke those subconscious concepts, the client can take feelings related to the past and transfer them onto the psychoanalyst. In this psychoanalytic approach, this is known as transference because the client transfers his feelings about a past person onto the psychoanalyst, usually unknowingly.
Just as a client can experience transference, so can a therapist. Countertransference, sometimes written as countertransference, refers to the situation in which a therapist associates his client’s qualities with the qualities of someone the therapist knew or knows. While most psychologists are trained to maintain boundaries with their clients to ensure effective counseling, many schools of psychological thought believe that some amount of countertransference may be unavoidable.
An example of a countertransference is when a psychoanalyst begins to have feelings of romantic or sexual attraction to his client. Also known as an erotic countertransference, this type of countertransference is usually a reason for ending the therapist-client relationship. The continuation of the professional relationship is believed to run the risk of causing damage to the client.
Countertransference can also present itself in terms of negative feelings toward a client. If a client has similar mannerisms or other qualities that remind the psychoanalyst of an abusive person in the analyst’s past or present, the analyst may transfer feelings of hatred or disgust towards the client. This may result in a less helpful or less sympathetic treat, even if subconsciously. Therapists are, consequently, very conscious of maintaining impartiality and if these boundaries are crossed, a client may have to change psychoanalysts.
While countertransference is often discussed in negative or overt terms – in terms of crossing appropriate boundaries – many believe that some amount of countertransference is inevitable and common. Indeed, many psychologists believe that it opens the door to positive effects in therapy. By associating, however slightly, the client with another person, the therapist may be able to elicit those feelings with the client and help the client understand the concept of transference, thus providing an opportunity for psychoanalytic understanding and growth.
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