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Ferenczi's Contribution to the Concept of

Countertransference
Luis J. Martín Cabré
Published online: 06 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Luis J. Martín Cabré (1998) Ferenczi's Contribution to the Concept of Countertransference,
International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 7:4, 247-255, DOI: 10.1080/080370698436754

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 Int Forum Psychoanal 7:(247–255), 1998

Ferenczi’s Contribution to the Concept of Countertransference

Luis J. Martı́n Cabré, Madrid, Spain

Martı́n Cabré L.M. Ferenczi’s Contribution to the Concept of Countertransference. Int Forum Psychoanal
1998;7:247–255. Stockholm. ISSN 0803-706X.
On the basis of a historical survey of Ferenczi’s contributions to the concept of countertransference, the
author highlights the most important theoretical shifts present in each of his contributions, from Freud’s
initial formulation in 1910 to the ‘‘Clinical Diary’’. Besides pointing to some key concepts and
characteristics in Ferenczi’s thinking, such as ‘‘the control of the countertransference’’, ‘‘The transference-
countertransference interaction’’, ‘‘the analyst’s narcissism’’, and in particular the view of counter-
transference as a useful therapeutic tool in itself rather than as an obstacle for the cure. The author discusses
Ferenczi’s significant influence on some later analysts, especially on Heimann, Winnicott, Racker and
Searles who stood out precisely for, among other reasons, their contributions to the question of
countertransference.
Luis J. Martı́n Cabré, Ph.D., Joaquin Bau 7, 9D, 28036 Madrid, Spain
Downloaded by [North West University] at 08:43 20 December 2014

Since the Nuremberg Congress in March, 1910, at
which Freud employed the term ‘‘countertrans-
ference’’ (Gegenübertragung) for the first time in a
scientific paper, up to around 1950, when it reap-
peared in the writings of Winnicott (1), Racker (2)
and P. Heimann (3), the idea received scant attention
from analysts. From that time on, however, the
question of countertransference as an essential tool
in the psychoanalytic technique became a fundamen-
tal part of psychoanalytic training and therapeutic
work.
Sándor Ferenczi was one of the few analysts who,
departing from the ideas postulated by Freud in 1910,
endeavoured to elaborate and advance a theory of
countertransference that could account for the diffi-
culties that were gradually appearing in clinical
psychoanalysis, and to put forward a metapsychology
of the analyst’s psychic processes during the analysis.
Moreover, he did so well ahead of countless other
analysts who considered countertransference the key
to understanding and unravelling the patient’s uncon-
scious. Nevertheless, as a result of one of the most
remarkable processes of censorship in the history of
psychoanalysis, Ferenczi’s ideas were ‘‘forgotten’’
and condemned to silence. Even today, one still finds
comprehensive papers on countertransference that
fail to mention even the name of one of the most
enthusiastic pioneers of psychoanalysis and the man
who for twenty-five years was Freud’s privileged
interlocutor.
I shall not attempt in this brief paper to elaborate
on the scientific and political reasons for such a
remarkable ‘‘silence’’. I shall attempt instead
to show how many of the ideas that emerged so
suddenly in the 1950s, and which generated an end-
less stream of scientific studies on countertrans-
ference right up to the present, had already been
intuited to a large extent by Ferenczi.
Freud’s Point of Departure
Freud knew that emotions arising in the patient
during the analytic process could stir others in the
analyst. In numerous letters, he wrote of the unease
this caused him, not only with regard to his closest
collaborators such as Jung, Jones, Oscar Pfister and
even Ferenczi, but also himself. Thus, for example,
Ernst Falzeder (4) in a paper from 1994 demonstrates
the extent of Freud’s emotional and affective invol-
vement in the treatment of his ‘‘great patient’’,
Elfriede Hirschfeld, over a period of eight years,
which had undoubted repercussions on his theories
on psychoanalytic technique. It is well known that
the term ‘‘countertransference’’ appears for the first
time in Freud’s letter to Jung of June 7, 1909 (5), in
which he refers to Jung’s affair with Sabina Spielrein
and the inherent dangers of an excessive emotional
involvement which not even he himself had managed
to avoid.
Nevertheless, the first time that Freud used the
concept ‘‘countertransference’’ in a scientific text
was in a paper he delivered to the Nuremberg Con-
gress on March 30, 1910, entitled, ‘‘The Future
Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy’’ (6) (‘‘Die

䉷 Scandinavian University Press 1998. ISSN 0803-706X

 248 LJ Martı́n Cabré
Zukünftigen Chancen der Psychoanalytischen Tera-
pie’’). A careful reading shows, as Etchegoyen (7)
has pointed out, that Freud believed ‘‘that a knowl-
edge of countertransference was closely linked to the
future of psychoanalysis and that an understanding
of it would signify a huge advance for psychoanalytic
technique’’. Freud, however, also introduced theo-
retical and methodological changes that were totally
revolutionary. As well as changing the field of
observation of the analyst, who moves from being a
simple observer to an active participant, psycho-
analytic investigation stops being objective and
what were formerly observations become experi-
ences. For the first time, Freud signals the intrusive
nature of certain psychic phenomena, which have
the capacity to become ‘‘implanted’’ or ‘‘installed’’
in the analyst’s unconscious.
Freud adds, as a general rule, that the analyst must
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be aware of and control his countertransference, and
‘‘be able to cope with it’’ (‘‘Bewältigung’’) as an
essential requirement of being an analyst. That is to
say, Freud was pointing to the need to control the
countertransference in the sense that it should be
worked through and not merely ‘‘overcome’’, as
appears from Strachey’s translation. Were not these
the theoretical hypotheses from which Ferenczi
would develop his own theory of countertransference
and some of his most brilliant intuitions?
It has always been argued that in later writings,
especially in ‘‘Recommendations to Physicians’’ (8),
Freud adopted a negative view of countertransfer-
ence, referring to it as an ‘‘enveloping’’ obstacle that
interferes with the analytic work and as a trouble-
some difficulty that needs to be controlled through
self-analysis. I believe, however, that Freud was
led to check and, in part, abandon his initial enthu-
siasm for the subject owing to his fear that such a
complex issue, about which he lacked sufficient
clinical data, would detract from and cast doubt on
the therapeutic model he was postulating for psycho-
analysis. Thus, for example, in a long letter to Jung
of December 31, 1911, he reproaches, as he did with
Pfister, Jung’s excessive emotional involvement
with a patient, which he deems a grave mistake.
Instead, his advice is to remain inaccessible to the
demands of the patients and to maintain a strictly
receptive attitude. At the time he believed that it
would be better not to publish a paper on counter-
transference, but rather circulate copies of his ideas
among the most experienced analysts.
In all likelihood, the outcome, both personal and
Int Forum Psychoanal 7, 1998
analytical, of the ‘‘Elma affair’’, in which Freud
was involved as well as Ferenczi, motivated the
writing of ‘‘Observations on transference-love’’ (9),
in which countertransference is once again presented
as a danger that must be avoided and controlled.
Nevertheless, Freud’s awareness of the complexity of
the subject is plainly seen in his letter to Binswanger
of February 20, 1913:
The problem of the countertransference is one of the most
difficult in psychoanalytic technique. What is offered to
the patient must never be spontaneous affect, rather it must
always be expressed consciously. In some circumstances,
a lot should be offered, but never anything arising
directly from the analyst’s unconscious. The analyst
must always be aware of and overcome the countertrans-
ference to be free. However, at the same time, to give too
little to a patient because the analyst loves him too much
is to confuse him, and is a technical error. It is not easy
and practice is required.
The ‘‘Control’’ of the Countertransference
Eight years after Freud’s text was published, Ferenczi
took up the banner and reopened the debate. Perhaps
he felt that circumstances had changed sufficiently
to no longer justify Freud’s caution in requesting that
the subject of countertransference be restricted to his
small group of closest disciples. Also, it is likely
that the celebration in Budapest of the 5th Psycho-
analytic Congress marked a return to an interest in
psychoanalytic technique. There, as in 1910, Freud
delivered a paper, ‘‘Lines of advance in psycho-
analytic therapy’’ (10), that encouraged the emer-
gence of new ideas. In this paper, Freud outlined the
theoretical formulation of the ‘‘active technique’’,
credit for which is often attributed erroneously to
Ferenczi.
The first occasion on which Ferenczi, with Freud’s
approval, addresses the issue of countertransference
in some depth is in ‘‘On the technique of psycho-
analysis’’ (11), which he delivered to the Hungarian
Psychoanalytic Society three months after the afore-
mentioned Congress.
One of the chapters in this text is devoted pre-
cisely to the ‘‘control of the countertransference’’
(‘‘Die Bewältigung der Gegenübertragung’’) and he
employs the same word as Freud in his 1910 paper.
From Ferenczi’s standpoint, psychoanalytic therapy
demands a ‘‘twofold function’’ of the analyst: on the
one hand, he must observe the patient, listen to his
discourse and use his words to gain insight into
 Int Forum Psychoanal 7, 1998
his unconscious, while on the other hand all the
time, keeping his own attitude to the analysand
under control and modifying it when necessary. For
this reason, it was essential to control the counter-
transference. Nevertheless, whereas Freud proposed
self-analysis to achieve this (6), Ferenczi considered
that it was necessary for the analyst to have been
previously analysed. His insistence on this point
not only points to his unsatisfactory analysis with
Freud but also introduces the idea that not even the
most experienced of analysts can avoid committing
serious mistakes unless he listens to and works
through his own countertransferences.
The process of the ‘‘control of the countertrans-
ference’’ is described by Ferenczi in the following
phases. In the first:
one is miles from considering, let alone mastering, the
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countertransference. One yields to every affect that
the doctor-patient relationship may evoke, is moved by
the patient’s sad experiences, probably, too, by his fanta-
sies, and is indignant with all those who wish him ill.
In these circumstances the possibility of performing
a successful analysis is practically non-existent.
Ferenczi referred to his second phase as ‘‘resist-
ance against the countertransference’’, which is the
opposite reaction to the previous one but equally
likely to cause the analysis to fail:
If the psychoanalyst has learned painfully to appreciate the
countertransference symptoms and achieved the control of
everything in his actions and speech, and also in his
feelings, that might give occasion for any complications,
he is threatened with the danger of falling into the other
extreme and of becoming too abrupt and repellent towards
the patient; this would retard the appearance of the
transference, the pre-condition of every successful psycho-
analysis.
Some years later, Racker, too, would describe this
idea in his paper ‘‘Transference and Countertransfer-
ence’’ (12). He spoke of the consequences of the
analyst’s counterresistance and how, in his view, this
aims at preventing the patient’s regression and con-
verting the analysis into a monotonous process
burdened by reiterative interpretations and incapable
of producing the slightest transformation of the
patient’s inner world. Moreover, in the same paper,
Racker’s view of the analyst’s ‘‘objectivity’’ is
almost identical to that of Ferenczi. According to
him, it swings between two poles, both of which are
potentially neurotic, either to drown in the counter-
transference or to repress it in an obsessive attempt
Ferenczi’s contribution to the concept of countertransference 249
to attain the myth of the analyst as ‘‘free from
anguish and anger’’. In Racker’s view, the analyst
can only be ‘‘objective’’ with his patient when he
himself has become an object of self-observation and
analysis.
The third phase described by Ferenczi addresses
the control of the countertransference in the strict
sense of the term, which is only attainable after the
successful completion of the first two phases. It is
then that the analyst attains the mental state required
to ‘‘be carried along’’ during the treatment as the
psychoanalytic cure demands. What is really innova-
tive about this formulation is that for the first time
countertransference is not viewed as a hindrance or
a danger, but rather as an essential and efficient
tool. In this sense, his ideas foreshadowed the intui-
tions of later analysts like Balint, Bion, Heimann,
de Forest, Racker, Winnicott, Little, etc., who also
proposed the analyst’s countertransferential reaction
as an indispensable technical tool in the analytic
process. What is more, the analyst’s interpretation
is the direct consequence of his working through of
the countertransference.
In Ferenczi’s test, we also find many references
to technical problems which as analysts we encounter
on a daily basis—silences, resistances, drowsiness,
acting out—not only in the patients, but in the analyst
too. He also cautions against the tendency of some
analysts to get involved in the patient’s real life
through very direct advice or recommendations that
fail to consider the transferential element accomp-
anying the patient’s ‘‘real’’ problems. He then goes
on to suggest a beautiful metaphor in an unmis-
takably Ferenczian context: the situation of the ana-
lyst is similar in many respects to that of the midwife,
who, as far as possible, attempts to remain a mere
observer of a natural process, until required at critical
moments to intervene with the forceps to aid a birth
that is not progressing spontaneously.
However, rather than controlling the countertrans-
ference, Ferenczi was, in fact, to discover it through
the rigorous application of the active technique, the
theoretical elaboration and clinical application of
which revealed a series of problems that had hitherto
been ignored. Starting from certain specific, repeti-
tive actions of the patient—symptomatic actions that
he called ‘‘formation of transitory symptoms’’—
Ferenczi attempted to infer with the patient’s uncon-
scious space into which the libidinal investments
withdrawn from the analytic work had been infil-
trated. Once these were known, he encouraged the
 250 LJ Martı́n Cabré
patient to eliminate such behaviour, a masturbatory
substitute, for example, and thus relinquish the con-
sequent substitutive gratification. However, para-
doxically enough, the more Ferenczi insisted on
‘‘activating’’ the patient, the more he activated,
unbeknown to himself, his own countertransferential
experiences.
The Countertransference-Transference
Interaction
Following the formulation and the introduction of
the concept of the ‘‘death drive’’, Freud not only
modified his conception of the psyche. New theories
of narcissism, masochism and destructive drives, as
well as the development of the ego through identifi-
cation processes, shaped a much broader conception
of the positive and negative transference. Without
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doubt, one of the factors that led Freud to develop a
new metapsychology had to do with the difficulties
he was encountering in his clinical work, especially
in dealing with a negative therapeutic reaction.
Perhaps for this reason, at the Berlin Congress
in 1922, Freud called on all analysts to reflect and
write on the ‘‘relationship between psychoanalytic
theory and technique and to gauge how much tech-
nique had influenced theory and to what extent each
nurtures or detracts from the other’’, instituting a
prize for the outstanding paper as he did so.
Ferenczi and Rank, who had been working along
these lines for some time, immediately took up the
gauntlet and jointly published one of their most
brilliant and far-reaching works, which without
doubt for many theorists still underpins great many
contemporary conceptions in psychoanalysis. They
entitled it, ‘‘The development of psychoanalysis’’
(13), with a subtitle fitting Freud’s call: ‘‘On the
interdependence of theory and technique’’.
In it, the authors elaborate on their scientific
framework and present a technical and theoretical
study of how to conduct the analytic process. Until
then, the main objective of analysis had been
‘‘remembering’’, to the extent that repetitions were
regarded as obstacles arising from the patient’s
resistances that needed to be ‘‘neutralised’’ by the
analyst. In contrast, Ferenczi believed that the funda-
mental aim of analytic working through, and thus of
the analyst’s interpretations, was the repetition com-
pulsion and the multiple transference manifesta-
tions, which should be treated as ‘‘real unconscious
material’’. The key role that Ferenczi ascribed to
Int Forum Psychoanal 7, 1998
transferential interpretation and the analytic process,
to the detriment of the intellectualised identification
of the unconscious content, fantasies and representa-
tions, implies not only a parallel modification of
the countertransference but a fundamental shift in
the very conception of analysis itself. Among other
things, for example, Ferenczi notes that very often
what is stirred is the analyst’s own narcissism
(‘‘narcissistic countertransference’’), which may
induce the analysand to limit his production to what
he knows will be gratifying to the analyst. In this
way, analysands attempt to avoid hostile material,
thus reinforcing their unconscious guilt and hindering
the analytic process. From this idea, Ferenczi elabo-
rated a whole conception of countertranference-
transference interaction not so much as a therapeutic
tool, but rather as the fundamental core of analytic
work.
A closer examination of this text, chapters II,
IV and VI of which were generally disregarded as
being Rank’s, enables us to grasp the full extent of
Ferenczi’s intuitions and their striking contemporary
relevance. In particular, in chapter IV, devoted to the
interaction of theory and practice, Ferenczi high-
lights the need for the analyst to leave aside his
theoretical constructs when approaching the analytic
situation. Only by starting afresh in each case, or, in
other words, by not retreating from new experiences,
could original discoveries be unearthed. Bion (14)
expressed Ferenczi’s intuition in clearer terms when
he says that the analyst must come to the analytic
situation ‘‘without memory and without desire’’.
Ferenczi’s firm belief that what emerges in the
‘‘here and now’’ of the analytic process derives from
the encounter between the analysand’s transference
and the analyst’s countertransference enabled the
deepest levels of the psyche to be fully explored. At
the same time, it justified the need to allow the
analysand to regress to whatever levels are necessary
and confirmed the role of countertransference as an
essential tool for recognising and detecting the most
significant aspects of the patient’s transference as
they unfold.
Ferenczi’s postulations were echoed in the psycho-
analytic output of the time. One text that normally
goes unnoticed is that by H. Deutsch entitled,
‘‘Occult process occurring during psychoanalysis’’
(15). The author shows how the analyst’s identifi-
cation with the patient’s infantile drives and his self-
analytic working through do not hinder the treatment
but rather form the basis for a fruitful development
 Int Forum Psychoanal 7, 1998
of the analyst’s intuition and empathy. It is interest-
ing to note that several of his ideas foreshadow
the concepts of concordant and complementary
countertransference as elaborated by Racker.
In early 1928, Ferenczi wrote ‘‘The elasticity of
psychoanalytic technique’’ (16), confirming his
almost complete departure from the active technique.
It was a precursor to what two years later he would
refer to as ‘‘neocatharsis’’. In a few pages he des-
cribes a great many clinical observations and techni-
cal recommendations which may be summarised as
the need for the analyst to acquire ‘‘Einfühlung’’
(empathy, capacity to ‘‘feel with’’ or be attuned to
the patient). Once again, Ferenczi employs one of
Freud’s terms, from a paper in 1910 (17). Never-
theless, whereas Freud’s ‘‘Einfühlung’’ appeared to
be closer to the idea of an ‘‘indulgent sympathy’’ on
the part of the analyst, Ferenczi extended it further.
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His conception of the term is almost synonymous
with the notion of ‘‘empathy’’ in everyday use
among contemporary analysts. Ferenczi not only
stresses its importance, but locates it right at the
core of the psychoanalytic technique.
It is not difficult to establish the similarity between
the concept of ‘‘Einfühlung’’, as postulated by
Ferenczi, and Kohut’s description of ‘‘empathy’’ in
‘‘The Analysis of the Self’’ (18), Zetzel’s ‘‘therapeu-
tic alliance’’ (19) and, in particular, the concept of
‘‘concordant countertransference’’ developed by
Racker (2) twenty years later. P. Heimann herself,
in one of her last works (1980) (20), points to the
need for each analysand to feel that ‘‘the analyst is
attuned to his emotions’’.
Ferenczi thus attempts a thorough study of the
significance of the analyst’s countertransference in
the analytic process and, consequently, delves into
the question of the analyst’s own analysis, the so-
called second fundamental rule. In this area, his ideas
are once again remarkably up-to-date, in that he
defends the notion of the training analysis as a
therapeutic analysis that should not be confused
with a process of intellectual or theoretical study.
According to Ferenczi, this analysis, more even than
that of the analysand, should continue and penetrate
far enough for the future analyst to enter in contact
with the deepest, most recondite, aspects of his
psychopathology. His firm conviction that the best
analyst is a patient well analysed, gradually became
an ideal, and began to be reflected in subsequent
scientific writings.
From then on, Ferenczi gradually began to put
Ferenczi’s contribution to the concept of countertransference 251
forward certain technical modifications. First, as a
therapeutic goal, he proposed the substitution of
a rigid parental super-ego by a more flexible analytic
one. Next, he suggested that an omniscient attitude
should be given up in favour of a more friendly
intuitive approach. In ‘‘The adaptation of the
family to the child’’ (21), when discussing the adult’s
inability to understand the child, he draws a parallel
to the analytic situation. If the ‘‘first mistake of the
parent is to forget his own childhood’’, the first
mistake of the analyst would be to attempt a cure
without taking into account, and without sufficient
analysis of, certain psychic conflicts, adopting
instead an attitude of omniscient, hypocritical author-
ity that precludes listening to the patient’s psychic
pain. Particularly striking is his criticism in ‘‘The
problem of the termination of the analysis’’ (22) of
those analysts who bring about the termination of the
analysis before the analysand feels that his life and
conduct has undergone substantial psychic change.
Analysis should adapt to the needs of the patient and
should ‘‘die from exhaustion’’.
A careful reading of Ferenczi’s writings from
this time, without doubt his most fascinating and
polemic from a psychoanalytic standpoint, reveals
the desperate struggle of a clinician with psycho-
analysis as his raison d’être to help his patients as
efficiently as possible. His idealisation of and abso-
lute belief in the therapeutic powers of psychoanaly-
sis had brought about a sort of ‘‘furor sanandi’’ that
led him, on occasions, to compare the analyst with
a father, or rather an adoptive mother, whose task
was to permit the patient to enjoy the benefits of
a normal childhood. This seems to be Ferenczi’s
objective in one of his most thought-provoking
works, ‘‘The principle of relaxation and neo-
catharsis’’ (23), in which he combines Freud’s ‘‘clas-
sical technique’’ with a responsive therapeutic atti-
tude facilitating the patient’s regression, provided
that the analyst controls his ‘‘countertransference’’
and ‘‘counterresistance’’.
In addition to his radical reversal of the surgeon
metaphor, Ferenczi lays the groundwork for a theory
of countertransference as a maternal formation. More
than benefiting from the lifting of the repression, the
patient may, in the course of analysis, accede to a
reparatory experience of that which was denied to
him during his childhood. Winnicott’s contribution,
too, introduced a therapeutic technique in which
the analytic process is likened to the mother-child
relationship and the constant interactions therein. He
 252 LJ Martı́n Cabré
describes what he called ‘‘primary mother preoccu-
pation’’, which enables the mother to actively adapt
to the child’s needs in a natural spontaneous manner.
Like Ferenczi, Winnicott (24) held that the analyst
and patient constitute an intersubjective relationship
with similar characteristics, particularly the analyst’s
capacity for empathy in relation to the analysand’s
primary needs. Further derivations of this conception
are Bion’s ‘‘reverie’’ (25), Paula Heimann’s ‘‘uncon-
scious perceptions of the analyst’’ (20), or more
recently, Leon Grinberg’s ‘‘projective counteridenti-
fication’’ (26, 27, 28). Bollas also offers an analogous
theory of countertransference in his conception of
the analyst as a ‘‘transforming object’’ (29).
The Clinical Diary
Ferenczi’s Clinical Diary (30), which can be con-
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sidered a long letter to Freud between January 7 and
October 2, 1932, contains a series of subtle intuitions
and invaluable contributions to psychoanalytic tech-
nique. Some of the theorising contained therein, in
particular with regard to countertransference, can still
be considered valid today.
Right from the first page entitled ‘‘the insensitivity
of the analyst’’, he signals the main focus for his
theorising: the analyst’s ‘‘real countertransference’’.
Countertransference, rather than being a hindrance,
is, in fact, the analyst’s most valuable tool. As
Ferenczi affirms:
one could almost say that the more weaknesses an analyst
has, which lead to greater or lesser mistakes and errors
but which are then uncovered and treated in the course of
mutual analysis, the more likely the analysis is to rest on
profound and realistic foundations.
Nevertheless, after demonstrating how analysis
fosters a ‘‘refined sensitivity’’ in the patient that
would enable him to grasp even the most obscure
nuances of the analyst’s attitude were it not for the
intensity of his own projections, Ferenczi endeavours
to demonstrate that the transference is not a response
to a spontaneous event, but rather is induced by the
analyst himself and thus by the analytic technique.
He goes on to add a criticism of a particular attitude
to analytic work that could still be endorsed today:
the interpretation of every detail as expressing a personal
affect toward the analyst . . . is likely to produce a kind of
paranoid atmosphere, which an objective observer could
describe as a narcissistic, specifically erotomaniacal delu-
sion of the analyst. It is possible that one of all too inclined
Int Forum Psychoanal 7, 1998
to assume too quickly that the patient either is in love
with us or hates us.
Paul Heimann (3), in her renowned paper on counter-
transference, pointed out that analysts who pay little
attention to their own psychic conflicts and the
dynamics of their own inner world risk attributing
to their parents what in fact belongs only to them-
selves. According to Heimann, this danger can be
neutralised: ‘‘if the analyst has worked through his
own infantile conflicts and persecutory and depres-
sive anxieties in his personal analysis so that he can
enter in contact with his own unconcious . . .’’.
However, Ferenczi goes even further. To the extent
that the countertransference constitutes the basis for
his interpretations, he begins to consider the hypoth-
esis that the analyst not only fails to become a good
father or mother for the patient but, in fact, becomes
an active participant repeating the traumatic situation
that the analysand had suffered in childhood. In
addition to fundamental thinking on psychoanalytic
technique, it seems at this time that Ferenczi’s
thoughts are those of a man who, close to death,
confronts his own feelings of guilt, and who taking
his capacity for empathy to its ultimate consequences
identifies intensely with the patient’s suffering and
pain. At such a level of penetration, ‘‘the tears of
doctor and patient mingle in a sublimated commu-
nion, which perhaps finds its analogy only in the
mother-child relationship’’. This emerges the idea of
‘‘mutual analysis’, which Ferenczi attributes to his
famous patient Elisabeth Severn, referred to in the
‘‘Diary’’ as R.N.
As he describes in his entry of May 5, Ferenczi’s
first impression of her was one of dislike. Never-
theless, he was led by his tolerant, elastic technique
and reactive formations to adopt an attitude of
acceptance and responsiveness towards her. As a
result, R.N. came to believe that the analyst had
fallen in love with her. It was thus, at this stage, that
Ferenczi became anxious and interpreted the negative
transference. According to Ferenczi, the impact on
the patient was indescribable and resulted in the
reactivation of an infantile trauma. The patient
affirmed that she could detect intense feelings of
hate in the analyst, which he was attempting to
repress and conceal by being hypocritically friendly.
Ferenczi, knowing that the patient was right,
admitted this and associated his countertrans-
ferential hate for his patient with the feelings of
hate that his own mother had stirred in him as a
 Int Forum Psychoanal 7, 1998
child. Ferenczi then agreed as an experiment to
change places with the analysand. In all likelihood,
Ferenczi was acting out his insufficient containing
function, while unconsciously using the patient as a
container for his feelings and emotions. Nevertheless,
the idea of communicating the countertransferential
feelings to the patient was followed up in the psycho-
analytic literature.
In a celebrated, though controversial, paper,
entitled ‘‘Hate in the countertransference’’ (1),
Winnicott affirmed that the disclosure of counter-
transferential hate not only was not inadvisable but
even beneficial to both the patient and the analytic
process. Likewise, M. Little (31) defended the appro-
priateness of revealing the nature of the counter-
transferential feelings in order to encourage the
patient to accept certain transferential feelings in
order to encourage the patient to accept certain
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transferential experiences. As in later writings by
Langs (32) and Searles (33), he postulated that, and
one can almost hear the echo of Ferenczi’s mutual
analysis, the patient could bring interpretations to
the analyst that would greatly facilitate his gaining an
insight into the countertransference. More recently,
analysts like Epstein (34) and Gorkin (35) have put
forward the need to include countertransferential
confessions as an important part of the psychoanaly-
tic technique.
The author who may well have taken furthest
some of the intuitions contained in the Clinical
Diary, though without mentioning Ferenczi, is
Searles, an analyst who like Ferenczi has devoted a
large part of his work to treating severely psychotic
patients. In ‘‘The patient as therapist to his analyst’’
(33), he postulates the hypothesis that in the course
of the analysis the psychotic patient needs to ‘‘create
a made-to-measure analyst’’ in order to be able to
introject and reconstruct in him a safer, less perse-
cutory, inner world as an essential condition of
overcoming the psychosis. Like Ferenczi, he departs
from the hypothesis that every patient experiences
the unconscious desire to become his analyst’s
therapist and to ‘‘cure’’ him.
Besides the underlying criticism of Kleinian
theory, which states that the fantasy of curing the
analyst is nothing more than a reparatory act by
the patient due to his own sadism, and Bion’s idea
of a ‘‘parasitic relationship’’ in psychosis, Searles
proposes an essentially symmetrical psychoanalytic
relationship. Thus, the ‘‘therapeutic alliance’’ is
equally applicable to each member of the analytic
Ferenczi’s contribution to the concept of countertransference 253
dyad, and the analyst’s acceptance of ‘‘the thera-
peutic impulses of the patient’’, aimed at converting
the analyst into a good-enough mother capable of
containing or a sexually potent father, is of funda-
mental importance to the analytic process.
For my part, I do not subscribe to some of the
theories I have just outlined, believing like M. Mancia
(36) that to reveal countertransferential feelings
to the analysand is, in fact, an admission of one’s
own inability to work them through adequately
enough, and a failure of the capacity to transform,
upon which the creativity required in analysis is
based. However, I believe that Ferenczi’s final
clinical intuitions were the precursors of many con-
temporary theories which stress the usefulness of
countertransference, projective identification and
projective counteridentification as essential tools in
the analytic process, the recognition of the emo-
tional participation of the analyst and the possibility
to penetrate the patient’s transference and to observe
and interpret the countertransferential reactions.
At the end of his ‘‘Diary’’, Ferenczi states that
the therapeutic failure of many analyses is not due
to inaccessible resistances, nor to the patient’s
impenetrable narcissism, but rather to the analyst’s
own difficulties, in particular, his insensibility, lack
of tact and empathy. By stressing the emotional
participation of the analyst in the analytic process
and the role of countertransference, Ferenczi also
highlighted the importance of the persona of the
analyst and, in particular, of his own analysis as a
fundamental part of the work.
After Ferenczi’s death, some of his most brilliant
clinical intuitions, especially those addressing the
countertransference, were practically forgotten. Yet,
for the sake of accuracy, it is worth pointing out
that Melanie Klein, who had been in analysis with
Ferenczi, was employing countertransference after
1919, or, in her words, ‘‘the communication from
unconscious to unconscious’’, from which she would
later develop many of her well-known theories of
the infantile mind and psychotic states. Fanny Hann-
Kende (37), for her part, also emphasised the possible
utility of countertransference in the psychoanalytic
technique, taking into account Freud’s thoughts
on telepathy, while Alice and Michael Balint (38)
stressed ‘‘the inevitable intrusion of the analyst’s
personality in the analytic relationship’’ and Izette
de Forest (39, 40) highlighted the ‘‘interactive
nature of transference and countertransference’’.
However, it is only after the decade of the 1950s
 254 LJ Martı́n Cabré
that contributions on countertransference begin to
appear more or less simultaneously, based on some
of Ferenczi’s intuitions but modifying substantially
their clinical and theoretical dimension.
Thus, at the 16th Congress in Zurich, Paula
Heimann stressed that countertransference was the
essential tool in order to gain an understanding of
the patient’s unconscious material and for the formu-
lation of adequate interpretations. Around this time,
Racker postulated, although less radically than
Paula Heimann, the hypothesis that the main source
of the analyst’s feelings lies in the mind of the
patient, and anticipated the idea of analysis as a
bipolar space that years later would be taken up by
the Barangers (41). M. Little (31), too, challenged the
classical idea of the analyst-mirror and stressed
the need to use countertransferential feelings
when formulating interpretations. Sullivan (42),
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meanwhile, proposed the idea of the analyst as a
‘‘active observer’’. From these theoretical advances,
a long list of analysts of the stature of M. Khan,
M. Mahler, Searles, Fromm-Reichmann, Rosen,
Guntrip, Spitz, Nacht, Kohut, etc., continued to
extend some of Ferenczi’s most inspired clinical
intuitions, though almost always without mentioning
his name.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to mention that in his
address in Madrid, in 1928, Ferenczi spoke of the
debt of gratitude that Central Europeans owed to
Spanish thinkers, art and literature. In return, in my
own modest way, I would like to pay tribute to a
man, who contributed decisively to the growth of
psychoanalytic theory and practice. He analysed and
trained analysts of the stature of Jones, M. Klein and
M. Balint, published over one hundred invaluable
clinical and theoretical papers of remarkable con-
temporary relevance, and influenced the theoretical
development of a great many analysts far too
numerous to mention. He also made therapeutic
efficacy the essential platform for the ethics of
psychoanalysis, transformed his unlimited capacity
for empathy into an experience of human solidarity
with the pain and desperation of every one of
his patients, and stood out, as A. Haynal has written,
‘‘for his unique generosity, intellectual courage,
independence and honesty’’.
In concluding his lecture in Madrid, Ferenczi
expressed his hope that Spain would soon be in a
Int Forum Psychoanal 7, 1998
position to join the countries practising psycho-
analysis. He certainly could not have imagined that
seventy years later an International Congress would
be held in Madrid to study his contributions. Let us
hope that all of us together can reclaim his enthu-
siasm and belief in analysis, his faithfulness to
Freud, his clinical honesty and his scientific oeuvre
as a living heritage of psychoanalytic theory and
practice and as a breath of fresh air and hope in the
future possibilities of our ‘‘impossible’’ profession.
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Summaries in German and Spanish
Martı́n Cabré L.J. Ferenczis Beitrag zur Gegenübertragung
Der Autor gibt einen historischen Überblick über Ferenczis
Beitrag zur Gegenübertragung. Er betont die wichtigsten Ver-
änderungen seit Freuds erster Formulierung 1910. Dabei werden
einige Schlüsselbegriffe deutlich, die Ferenczis Denken kenn-
zeichnen, z.B. die Kontrolle der Gegenübertragung, die Über-
tragungs-Gegenübertragungs-Beziehung, der Narzissmus des
Analytikers und besonders die Anschauung, dass die Gegenüber-
tragung als solche ein wichtiges Werkzeug der Behandlung ist
und nicht ein Hindernis für die Kur. Der Autor erörtert schliess-
lich den Einfluss von Ferenczi auf einige wichtige spätere
Analytiker wie Paul Heimann, Winnicott, Racker und Searles,
die sich der Gegenübertragung in ähnlicher Weise angenähert
haben.
Ferenczi’s contribution to the concept of countertransference 255
33. Searles HF. The patient as therapist to his analyst. In: Giovacchini
PL. Tactics and techniques in psychoanalytic therapy. London:
Hogarth Press, 1975.
34. Epstein L. The therapeutic function of hate in the countertransfer-
ence. Contemporary Psychoanalysis 1977;13,pp. 442–61.
35. Gorkin M. The uses of the countertransference. New York: Aronson,
1987.
36. Mancia, M. Percorsi. Torino: Boringhieri, 1995.
37. Hann-Kende F. On the role of transference and countertrans-
ference in psychoanalysis New York: International University
Press, 1933.
38. Balint A, Balint M. On transference and countertransference. Int J
Psychoanal 1939;20:223–30.
39. De Forest I. The therapeutic technique of Sándor Ferenczi. Int J
Psychoanal 1942;23:120–39.
40. De Forest I. The leaven of love. A development of the psychoanalytic
theory and technique of Sándor Ferenczi. London: Gollancz, 1954.
41. Baranger M, Baranger W. Problemas del campo psicoanalı́tico.
Buenos Aires: Kargieman, 1969.
42. Sullivan HS. Teoria interpersonale della psichiatria (1953). Milano:
Feltrinelli, 1972.
Martı́n Cabré L.J. Aportaciones de Ferenczi al concepto de
contratransferencia
A través de un recorrido histórico por las distintas aportaciones
de Ferenczi al concepto de contratransferencia, el autor señala los
cambios teóricos mas importantes presentes en cada una de sus
aportaciones, desde la inicial formulación de Freud en 1910 hasta
el ‘‘Diario Clı́nico’’. Además de insistir en algunos de los
conceeptos claves y caracterı́sticos de su pensamiento tales
como el ‘‘dominio de la contratransferencia’’, ‘‘la interacción
transferencial-contratransferencial’’, ‘‘el narcisismo del ana-
lista’’, y, en definitiva, el entender la contratransferencia mas
que como un obstáculo para la cura como un instrumento
terapeútico en sı́ mismo, se analizan algunas de las influencias
mas significativas de Ferenczi en algunos de los psicoanalistas
posteriores, especialmente P. Heimann, Winnicott, Racker y
Searles que se destacaron precisamente entre otras razones por
sus contribuciones a la temática contratransferencial.