The Ferenczi’s contribution to the concept of countertransference

Abstract

The author develops the theme of countertransference from the first Freudian formulations on the concept and the role played by Sándor Ferenczi as the most important classical theoretician of this contemporary and inescapable theme of psychoanalysis. Highlighting Freud’s not necessarily critical attitude towards the countertransferential, the author shows that Ferenczi was the first to use the technical parameter of the use of countertransference as a fundamental clinical tool, the concept of empathy (Einfühlung), and the analyst’s second fundamental rule. Later, certain aspects of Ferenczi’s clinical perspective are developed, such as the role of repetition compulsion, therapeutic regression, the interplay, transference-countertransference and the various Ferenczian experimentations, relating them to contemporary work such as those by Winnicott, Racker, Searles, M. Little and P. Heimann. The paper shows how many of the ideas attributed to these authors and to many others had been conceived, for the most part, by Ferenczi, who therefore anticipated many of the contemporary theories regarding the utility of countertransference, projective identification, as indispensable technical instruments for the analytical work, for the recognition of the emotional engagement of the analyst and the possibility to enter into the patient’s transference and observe and interpret countertransferential reactions.