Countertransference

1. Etymology

Countertransference names a particular case of projection: the analyst’s unconscious emotional response to the analysand. Related: transference; rapport; psychic infection; syntonic vs illusory (Fordham).

2. Plain summary

Countertransference is what the patient stirs in the analyst—often before either knows it. Jung treated it as potentially as useful or as obstructive as the patient’s transference, depending on whether it serves better rapport or locks both in unconscious identity.

A workable analysis assumes the analyst is not as captured as the patientbut training analysis never abolishes projection. Mutual unconsciousness can infect both and stall the work. Later Jungians distinguish syntonic countertransference (feeling the patient’s inner world from inside) from illusory/neurotic reactions of the analyst alone. Related to the alchemical vessel of mutual process and to coniunctio imagery.

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common countertransference-related figures and motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jungs CW contains only these):

unconscious emotional response analyst→analysand; special case of projection; answer to transference; compulsive / mystical identity with the object; organ of information (CW 16); psychic infection / identifying with the patient; sphere of mutual unconsciousness; occupational hazard of psychotherapy; help only as far as the analyst has gone; syntonic vs illusory (Fordham); scrutiny of analyst’s emotions; alchemy metaphor for mutual vessel; participation mystique risk; shadow of the healer; coniunctio / opposites in the pair; complex activation in the analyst.

3. Academic elucidation

4. Lexicon

Sharp (1991)

Countertransference. A particular case of projection, used to describe the unconscious emotional response of the analyst to the analysand in a therapeutic relationship. … A transference is answered by a counter-transference from the analyst when it projects a content of which he is unconscious but which nevertheless exists in him. … This phenomenon is one of the chief occupational hazards of psychotherapy. It causes psychic infections in both analyst and patient…

(Sharp, 1991, p. [provisional — unverified])

Jung was one of the pioneers of the therapeutic use of counter-transference ‘You can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence… One of the best known symptoms of this kind is the counter-transference evoked by the transference’ regarded countertransference as ‘a highly important organ of information’… also… ‘psychic infection’… Fordham… ‘syntonic’… ‘illusory’ countertransference…

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

You can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence… By so doing he only denies himself the use of a highly important organ of information… One of the best known symptoms of this kind is the counter-transference evoked by the transference.

It is none too easy for the doctor to make himself aware of this fact… the more unconsciously this happens, the more the doctor will be tempted to adopt an “apotropaic” attitude Yet this lack of insight is an ill counsellor, for the unconscious infection brings with it the therapeutic possibility…

(Jung, 1946/1966, CW 16, 365)

If, on the contrary, he is neurotic, a fateful, unconscious identity with the patient will inevitably supervene—a “counter-transference of a positive or negative character. Even if the analyst has no neurosis, but only a rather more extensive area of unconsciousness than usual, this is sufficient to produce a sphere of mutual unconsciousness, i.e., a counter-transference. This phenomenon is one of the chief occupational hazards of psychotherapy. It causes psychic infections… an analyst can help his patient just so far as he himself has gone and not a step further.

(Jung, 1937/1966, CW 16, pp. 329–330, ¶545)

See also: transference; projection; coniunctio; participation mystique; shadow; complex; opposites; dreams; individuation; mother; senex. (Queued — not yet linked: alchemy, mana personalities.)

References

Jung, C. G. (1966). Problems of modern psychotherapy. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 16, pp. 7172, ¶163). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1931)

Jung, C. G. (1966). The psychology of the transference. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 16, ¶365). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1946)

Jung, C. G. (1966). The realities of practical psychotherapy. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 16, pp. 329–330, ¶545). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1937)

Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis. Routledge.

Sharp, D. (1991). Jung lexicon: A primer of terms & concepts. Inner City Books.