Countertransference: The Psychoanalyst's Shared Experience and Inquiry with his Patient

Countertransference: The Psychoanalyst's Shared Experience and Inquiry with his Patient Benjamin Wolstein From all that has been said about countertransference during the last 70 years, I have selected for discussion a theme that has not received the full attention it deserves; that of countertransference as part of a field of experience and inquiry, belonging as much to that field for shared experience and inquiry as, for example, the patient's transference. And this, of course, applies not only to countertransference but also to counterresistance and counteranxiety, not only to transference but also to resistance and anxiety. I do not mean to refer only to the psychic symmetry of the psychoanalyst and his patient as two human beings in therapeutic relation to each other, but, more importantly, to indicate that psychoanalytic therapy does, in fact, take place precisely because the two coparticipants can treat transference and countertransference within a coequal frame of reference and within a shared field of experience and inquiry. The principle that their relatedness is symmetrical rather than coordinate, or that their frame of reference is coequal rather than hierarchical, derives from some relevant social and cultural philosophies of our time, especially for those psychoanalysts and patients who believe systems of value rooted in humanism, science and democracy, such values as individuality, truth and freedom. But the principle of psychic symmetry in psychoanalysis, however, does not express a mere preference in social and cultural philosophy. It reflects, instead, the unity underlying all psychic process. It points up the essential condition of the human psyche,