Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Treatability in severe personality disorders: how far do the science and art of psychotherapy carry us?
- 2 The treatment of choice: what method fits whom?
- 3 Countertransference: recent developments and technical implications for the treatment of patients with severe personality disorders
- 4 Beyond management to cure: enhancing the positive dimensions of personality
- 5 Personality disorders from the perspective of child and adolescent psychiatry
- 6 Disruptions in the course of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis
- 7 Managing suicidal crises in patients with severe personality disorders
- 8 Borderline personality disorder, day hospitals, and mentalization
- 9 Pharmacotherapy of severe personality disorders: a critical review
- 10 Severe cases: management of the refractory borderline patient
- 11 Dangerous cases: when treatment is not an option
- 12 Stalking of therapists
- 13 Common elements of effective treatments
- Index
- References
3 - Countertransference: recent developments and technical implications for the treatment of patients with severe personality disorders
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Treatability in severe personality disorders: how far do the science and art of psychotherapy carry us?
- 2 The treatment of choice: what method fits whom?
- 3 Countertransference: recent developments and technical implications for the treatment of patients with severe personality disorders
- 4 Beyond management to cure: enhancing the positive dimensions of personality
- 5 Personality disorders from the perspective of child and adolescent psychiatry
- 6 Disruptions in the course of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis
- 7 Managing suicidal crises in patients with severe personality disorders
- 8 Borderline personality disorder, day hospitals, and mentalization
- 9 Pharmacotherapy of severe personality disorders: a critical review
- 10 Severe cases: management of the refractory borderline patient
- 11 Dangerous cases: when treatment is not an option
- 12 Stalking of therapists
- 13 Common elements of effective treatments
- Index
- References
Summary
What follows is an overview of the clinical experiences regarding countertransference that we have gathered over 25 years in the treatment of severe personality disorders at the Personality Disorders Institute of the Weill Cornell Medical College and the Westchester Division of the New York Hospital. Earlier experiences of the author in his work with the psychotherapy research project of the Menninger Foundation provided the conceptual and clinical background that influenced the development of new technical approaches and the reshaping of the relevant concepts.
The contemporary concept of countertransference
At this time, the “totalistic” or “global” concept of countertransference clearly has replaced the classical concept as originally defined by Freud (1910). The classical concept defined countertransference as the analyst's transferences toward the patient, or the analyst's unconscious reactions to the patient's transference; the accent was on the unconscious aspect of the analyst's reaction, with the implication that only further analytic work by the analyst on himself would help him to “overcome” the countertransference, as Freud recommended. The contemporary “totalistic” or “global” concept, in contrast, defines countertransference as the therapist's total emotional reaction to the patient at any particular point in time (Kernberg, 1975). The implication of this modern, contemporary concept is that the therapist needs to monitor his/her countertransference consistently to deepen the understanding of the patient by relating it to the developments in the transference.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Severe Personality Disorders , pp. 42 - 58Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
References
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