Transference and countertransference issues in movement psychotherapy

Abstract

One of the primary tasks of all psychodynamic psychotherapies is to help patients make conscious the rich variety of past relationships with significant others with whom they share an identification and to develop more accurate, flexible, and independent representations of themselves in relation to others (Geller, Smith-Cooley & Hartiey, 1981-82). This paper explores some ways that psychoanalyticaIiy-trained movement therapists contribute to this enterprise: by observing and working directly with patients’ nonverbal enactments of conflicted past relationships, by lending themselves as object’ for patients’ projections and by serving as a model for important ego functions that patients lack at the outset but acquire in the process of treatment. A case will be made for viewing movement therapists’ countertransference reactions as a useful therapeutic instrument, one that can be employed to determine the emotional developmental level of patients and enable therapists to adapt interventions accordingly. Lastly, some coping strategies adopted by inexperienced movement therapists to defend against the awareness of unpleasant countertransference reactions will be cited.