Objective countertransference: do patients' interpersonal impacts generalize across therapists?

Abstract

AbstractObjective countertransference refers to the constricted feelings, attitudes and reactions of a therapist, that are induced primarily by the patient's maladaptive behaviour and that are generalizable to other therapists (and to other significant others in the patient's life). In interpersonal theory and therapy, the equivalent of objective countertransference is the impact message concept. Impact messages refer to the cognitions, emotions and action tendencies evoked in the therapist by a particular patient's interpersonal pressures. This paper tests the interpersonal hypothesis that interpersonal impact generalizes across therapists (and by extension across interpersonal relationships). Generalizability of impact messages across therapists was determined for different combinations of therapist pairs, independently rating a total of 131 psychiatric outpatients with the IMI‐C (Impact Message Inventory, revised circumplex version). It was found that impact messages were most clearly generalizable across therapists for the Dominance (D) category, followed by the Hostile–Dominant (HD) and Hostile–Submissive (HS) categories. In contrast, the other five categories of impact messages turned out to be poorly generalizable across therapists. Impact messages within the Dominance (D) category were also strikingly stable over a period of time of 12 months or longer. Some possible causes of the limited generalizability of most impact message categories are discussed. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.