Transference and Counter-Transference

This book, whose central theme is counter-transference, had considerable impact in Latin America, and also aroused interest and confirmation in other psychoanalytic centers of North America and Europe. Racker argued that transference and counter-transference are the two components of a unity that reciprocally give life to one another and create the interpersonal relationship in the analytic setting. The counter-transference encompasses the analyst's total response to the transferences of the patient and to his or her own transferential reactions to the person of the analysand. It is a decisive factor for the understanding and interpretation of the patient's psychological processes.