Becoming an individual – integrating the working through in the countertransference

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article presents a clinical case where the therapist experiences negative countertransference reactions that impair the sense of herself. The therapist feels totally controlled by her negative feelings activated by the patient; making her incapable to think her own thoughts and triggering a loss of her own subjectivity. The therapist’s countertransference reactions may appear due to a confusion between the self and the object in the patient which is further evoked in the therapist through projective identification. Essential for the therapy is the therapist’s working through in the countertransference to recover her own self in a relationship with the patient. A struggle for a true self and sounder object-relationships may be considered a goal in therapy in psychoanalytic theory. The movement from the paranoid-schizoid to the depressive position, the resolution of the oedipal situation and the creation of the Third all emphasize the importance of a realistic experience of the other, the two latter clearly demanding the creation of a third part in this process. This article argues that the appearance of a triangulation in the therapist’s mind and in the patient–therapist relationship was crucial for the therapist to contain her countertransference reactions and for her subjectivity to recover.