The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 1986/4. [antikvár]

COUNTERTRANSFERENCE, EMPATHY, AND THE ANALYTIC IDEÁL: THE IMPACT OF LIFE STRESSES ON ANALYTIC CAPABILITY BY SANDER M. ABEND, M.D. Analysts' emotional attitudes toward countertransference issues are influenced by unduly perfectionistic ideals that are partly dermed from the early period of psychoanalytic theory. Analysts' unconscious receptivity, whether of the beneficially empathic kind or the disadvantageous countertransference variety, is a reflection of a dynamic internál state. This fundamental relationship between empathy and countertransference is illustrated with examples. Important events that occur in the life of the analyst, by virtue of their impact on his own central compromise formations, cannot but affect his analytic functioning. Minor disturbances in analytic capability are commonplace and do not significantly handicap effective work. My participation in a conference devoted to an examination of the nature of the stresses that various life events impose on analysts' analytic functioning stimulated me to look for features which might be common to all such situations. I reached the conclusion, which will not surprise any experienced colleague, that fluctuation in the quality of the contribution of the analyst's own unconscious to his analytic tasks constitutes the critAn earlier version of this paper was presented as the introduction to a panel discussion, Stresses in the Life Cycle of the Analyst, at the Régiónál Meeting of the psychoanalytic societies of the New York area and New Haven, Southbury, Connecticut, October 13-14, 1985.