Understanding Countertransference From Projective Identification to Empathy [Paperback]

Seeking to mediate between the classical view of countertransference as a neurotic impediment to the treatment process and the more recent totalist perspective, which assumes that the therapist's emotional response necessarily reveals something about the patient, Tansey and Burke stake out a thoughtful middle ground. They submit that the therapist's utilization of adequately processed countertransference reactions is in fact integral to treatment success, while arguing against the totalist assumption that the therapist's emotional to the patient must be revelatory in a direct and immediate way.Introduction. Countertransference, Empathy, and Projective Identification: An Historical Perspective. Discussion of Terms. The Unitary Sequence for Processing Interactional Communications: An Introduction. The Reception Phase. Internal Processing. The Communication Phase. Validation. Countertransference Disclosure. Clinical Illustrations. Closing Comments.

Projective identification, once an obscure Kleinian schizoid mechanism designating a primitive intrapsychic phenomenon, has activated newfound importance in the current psychoanalytic climate of interactionality and intersubjectivity.  Tansey and Burke inextricably link it with empathy specifically and countertransference generally.  In doing so, they have not only forged a sustantial and credible bridge between classical analysis, Klein, and Kohut, but they have also placed totalistic countertransference in the very center of the analytic process - emphasizing the complex nature of the analyst's response, which they have divided into the phases of reception, internal processing, and communication.  Each of these phases is in turn subdivided into three subphases, which, in combination, offer the most nearly complete and meticulously developed concept of countertransference to date.  The depth and complexity Tansey and Burke impart to the empathic process, combl£&