The lived experience of countertransference in psychiatric/mental health nurses

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evolve a structural description of nurses' experience of countertransference. The phenomenological method was chosen for the study. The sample consisted of 5 participants who met selection criteria. The participants gave audiotaped descriptions of their experiences in caring for patients for whom they experienced countertransference. The lived experience of countertransference emerged from the findings of this study as a process of the continuous growth of self-awareness. Initially, the experience entailed the struggle to abandon objectivity, emotional neutrality, and therapeutic omnipotence. It was the abandonment of these principles that enabled the nurse to begin to use the self's experienced emotions therapeutically in interactions with patients. For the participants, the feelings aroused in the self came to be understood as having meaning within the concept of countertransference and thus, came to be understood as normal responses to caregiving. It is the continuing ability of these nurses to transcend this normal, human response, and to use their growing self-awareness to provide an appropriate level of care to the patient, that is the hallmark of the lived experience.