The recent special issue (September 2007) of ClinicalSocial Work Journal on ‘‘Compassion Fatigue’’ highlightsthe important topic of the social worker’s subjectiveresponse to the stressors that are inevitably encountered insocial work practice. Brian Bride, Charles Figley and theircolleagues have provided an important service to our pro-fession by highlighting these issues in a series of articles,books and research studies over the past 20 years. Whilesocial workers focus daily on caring for others, issues ofself-care are too often neglected. The constructs of‘‘compassion fatigue’’ and ‘‘secondary traumatization’’have played an important role in raising awareness of theseself-care issues throughout the social work profession: indirect practice, administration and academia.At the same time, our colleagues in the ‘‘compassionfatigue’’ realm have taken a largely ahistorical approach intheir scholarly pursuits, specifically neglecting a large bodyof literature on countertransference which greatly enhancesour appreciation of the self-care issues involved in socialwork practice. For example, in a recent NASW article,Brian Bride suggests that ‘‘secondary traumatization’’ isconceptualized as distinct from ‘‘pronounced counter-transference’’ (Stoesen 2007, p. 4). In this recent specialissue of CSWJ, countertransference is barely mentioned,although it is frequently discussed in this journal’s pages.Reviewing Figley’s extensive writings, it appears that heuses an outdated and limited definition of countertransfer-ence which suggest that the social worker’s past lifeexperiences trigger an emotional reaction to current workexperiences. According to Figley (2002), countertransfer-ence is ‘‘an emotional reaction to a client by the therapist—irrespective of empathy, the trauma, or suffering. It isdefined as the process of seeing oneself in the client, ofover identifying with the client, or of meeting needsthrough the client (Corey 1991). In contrast to compas/sionfatigue, countertransference is chronic attachment associ-ated with family of origin relationships and has much lessto do with empathy toward the client that causes trauma’’(pp. 1433–1434).Although Figley acknowledges that the concept ofcountertransference has emerged from ‘‘psychodynamictherapy,’’ his sole reference (to Corey’s book) is to thecounseling literature. In my limited review of Figley’swritings, I could not find a single reference to the volu-minous psychoanalytic or clinical social work literature oncountertransference.Figley’s differentiation of countertransference andcompassion fatigue is illustrated by a clinical vignette in anarticle written for psychotherapists (Figley 2002). Hereports on a client, Jane, a young graduate student incounseling psychology who ‘‘was not responding well to anassigned client’’ and was making ‘‘clinical errors’’ whichwere ‘‘associated more with how the client’s story wasupsetting her.’’ The client was a female college studentwho was having adjustment problems in separating fromher family. Jane’s supervisors noticed that ‘‘her client feltguilty about leaving her mother; that the client had beenover-functioning while the mother had developed a con-siderable dependency that needed addressing.’’ Jane oftenshifted the focus of therapy to other issues. In therapy,‘‘Jane wanted to talk about and face these clinical errors...and, reluctantly, her mother’s chronic illness. We quicklymoved to Jane’s feelings of guilt about her own mother’scondition...’’ (p. 1434).