Transference and countertransference issues with sexually abused clients

Abstract

This paper explores some of the therapeutic issues which arise when working with sexually abused clients. It is suggested that both the client and the therapist may at moments take any of the three positions in the Oedipal triangle and that the mother, father and child status are interchangeable in the transference and counter-transference. It is also suggested that the Oedipus myth represents the failure of a family to contain sexual and murderous passions. I describe a Hindu myth which takes a similar triangle of passion but illustrates how containment is possible. It is proposed that this implies we need to re-evaluate the presence of the erotic in therapy in a more positive light. It is further suggested that the sexually abused client needs to experience the containment of passion if a healing process is to occur.     

Resistance and countertransference in child and adolescent psychotherapy

Countertransference brings to light the influence of both anxiety and family processes on the child's or adolescent's maturation and character development. The significance of developmental, dynamic, and family-interpersonal factors have all been stressed as part of the latent communication inherent in resistance. Family influences on resistance and countertransference have to be the subject of analytic scrutiny. The engagement of children and adolescents in the therapeutic process seriously threatens parents' defensive operations both as couples and as individuals. Countertransference responses afford the opportunity not only to clarify the meaning of resistances but also to pinpoint anxieties that have been reexperienced by the child or adolescent with the analyst at points of threat and disorganization. The twofold therapeutic task with children and adolescents consists of delineating and counteracting the family's negative impact on the child's development and self, in addition to addressing the children's contribution to their own pathological traits and immaturities. Countertransference anxiety confirms the dynamic and family implications of the analyst's participation with the patient. Countertransference resistance suggests the analyst's lack of openness in investigating how the treatment has evoked the child's anxiety, the parent's anxiety, and the analyst's anxiety. Resistance-transference-countertransference exchanges reveal the child's or adolescent's efforts to move towards health while emerging from the internalized family.     

Role of countertransference in complex psychotherapy]

The psychotherapist has a key position in any psychotherapeutic situation, participating in the psychotherapeutic process with all his personality and responding both consciously and unconsciously to the patient and the entire psychotherapeutic system. Countertransference consists of those actions and emotional manifestations on the part of the psychotherapist, which originate from his unconscious strata as a reaction to the overall situation. The existence of countertransference and its possible interference with, and perhaps adverse effect on, the psychotherapeutic process require close scientific and social controls. Also, it will be necessary to make "self-experience" psychotherapy (educational analysis) a required subject. Countertransference also has important perception- and empathy-promoting functions.     

Transference, countertransference and mentoring: the ghost in the process

The concepts of transference and countertransference are used in this paper to explore some of the deeper dynamics of the relationship between mentor and mentee; it is hoped that this perspective gives a useful gaze on the mentoring process. Three aspects of the relationship are examined. The first is an exploration of the ambivalent relationship of mentor and mentee to the third party at the meeting--the organisation. The second is an examination of the mentoring process where transference theory illuminates aspects of the power, authority, control, affiliation and resistance in the freezing, unfreezing and refreezing aspects of the ebb and flow of transference and countertransference. The third aspect is an examination of the relationship between mentor and mentee with a glance at the narcissistic impulses of altruism and a sceptical brush with the dominant image of unconditional positive regard that is commonly supposed to flow from mentor to mentee.     

Transference,countertransference and responsibility: Their role in therapy and consultancy

The thrust for this paper lay in the author's experience as a psychotherapist (using broadly psycho-analytic methodologies), and as an Organisation Development Consultant working with individuals and groups in organisations where issues of transference and counter-transference relationships remain uncovered. The paper further explores transference from the point of view of its manifestation as the ghost in the machine in mundane relationships that becomes amplified in the authority relationship of therapy or consultancy. The paper then looks at the crucial issues in counter-transference—in particular issues of responsibility, power and humanity in the relationship. In the concluding section we suggest a taxonomy in order to explore situations in which transference and counter-transference can be benevolent or malevolent.In all, the ideological thrust of the paper is that, from the therapists/consultants' positions, they have, in a hermeneutic sense, to accept their own humanity and take responsibility for it (through the process of the counter-transference) in the therapeutic encounter.